


The Missing Piece

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Bisexuality, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Supporting Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:22:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 35,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock’s suicide, John struggles to understand exactly what Sherlock was to him, and why he is mourning so deeply and wholly. He accepts help from an unwanted source, and in time is able to reconcile his feelings and move on to love again - just in time for Sherlock to reappear, awakening in John all the old feelings, but this time, the missing piece of the puzzle as well, the one he’d been unconsciously suppressing before the fall. To complicate matters, he’s got a relationship that’s actually working, a wedding to plan, a bright future ahead of him rather like the one he dreamed of before Afghanistan. Before Sherlock. </p><p>John has learned a lot about love in the years Sherlock’s been gone. The question is - how much has <i>Sherlock</i> learned?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stone Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This story is one I've been wanting to tell for some time. It's going to be more organic in construction than planned and plotted, so fair warning. There's so much out there about John - is he straight? Gay? Bisexual? Perhaps he's none of those things, or perhaps he doesn't fit into a single wrapper. I envision him as a man who fell in love with Sherlock, but didn't realize that - or what it meant - until after he was gone. So I give him that voyage of discovery while Sherlock is gone, leaving him to deal with the reality of it from a different vantage point once Sherlock returns.

**Part 1: John**

 

Chapter 1

“Perhaps, Dr. Watson, you might consider holding a conversation with someone who actually talks back?”

John didn’t turn his head to face the voice behind him. 

“Piss off, Mycroft.”

“I don’t think so.”

Shit. There was no use to stay here, then. He wasn’t going to keep talking to Sherlock when Mycroft bloody Holmes was loitering about. 

“You’ve some boxes at 221B. Personal items you left behind.”

“Toss them, then.”

“Alright. If you insist. You _do_ know what’s there, don’t you?”

John gritted his teeth. Yeah. He did know. He also knew Mycroft wasn’t likely to toss it all, either. “Ship them to me, then. I’ll reimburse the cost. I’m right in thinking you’ve got my new address, yeah?”

“John.” The name - his given name - came after a considerable pause, a pause in which John continued to stare at the black headstone – _what the fuck could be more cold and lifeless than a block of stone? Couldn’t someone plant some ivy or a rose bush?_ – and Mycroft continued to wait, breath barely audible, behind him. 

“John…”

Great. Now he was repeating himself. 

“…perhaps you’d consent to a cup of tea?”

John’s bum was cold – and damp. He’d been sitting on the ground for some time. He was thirsty. And hungry. Tea sounded wonderful – perhaps with a scone or some of Mrs. Hudson’s banana bread.

“No thank you.”

He hated how his voice cracked – just a bit – but cracked nonetheless. Discernable enough for Mycroft, who was a Holmes, after all.

“John – he’s been gone three months. I feel it my duty – as his brother – to remind you that he wouldn’t want you like this. He’d want you to move on.”

“Liar.” John said the word, quietly but audibly, with absolute certainty. 

Mycroft had the good grace to laugh. There was something about that laugh that jarred against John’s mood, settled uncomfortably under his skin. Worse, it felt like a _shared_ laugh, a shared sentiment. An acknowledgment, of sorts, that they both knew – had known – Sherlock all too well.

“He wouldn’t want you like this, though. You can’t argue that point.”

“He doesn’t exactly get to weigh in on that, does he?” John responded. He’d had every intention of ignoring whatever else Mycroft had to say, or at least keeping his mouth shut, but the retort slipped out with all the venom and bitterness he’d been holding inside. “What – you have CCTV cameras here, too? Spying on people who are actually alive getting too dull, is it?”

He hadn’t expected Mycroft to react. The man was nothing if not remote, surgical, when it came to human relationships. But only a moment later, he was looking down at the man’s polished shoes, no more than a foot to his left. A gloved hand touched his shoulder.

 _Jesus bloody Christ no._

“Get your hand off my shoulder.”

He spoke the words slowly and quietly, without flinching, the threat behind them loud and clear. 

Mycroft’s hand immediately fell to his side, but he remained where he stood, his shadow falling across John’s crossed legs, stretching nearly to the tombstone. 

“I have in my pocket a card, and on the card is the name and number of a someone who can help you move through this. This person specialises in trauma and PTSD and works only on referral. All expenses will be paid by Sherlock’s estate, but you will have to make the call to schedule an appointment – she requires that of her patients – at least those capable of speech.”

He moved forward then, and laid a card on top of the stone, then drew a coin out of his pocket and placed it atop the card to weigh it down.

He turned, and John had his first glimpse of Mycroft Holmes since the funeral. He looked no different than he’d ever looked, really, though his face betrayed a certain concern that John had never seen in Mycroft Holmes. 

“I’m not interested,” John responded automatically.

Mycroft shrugged. He gazed past John, toward the drive where a black limo was surely waiting for him, and raised a finger, then dropped his hand to his side again. “It is, ultimately, your decision, John.” His hand strayed back to the card, and he tapped it lightly with his finger, then looked up again. “Dr. Wohlberg was Sherlock’s therapist for a time – a particularly difficult time in his life.” 

John laughed. It was not a pleasant sound, but rather one of dry disbelief. “Sherlock’s therapist? Right.” He shook his head. “Piss off, Mycroft.”

“You might ask that DI you’re so fond of - Lestrade, yes?” His gaze was unwavering as he fixed it on John. “I believe the initial referral came from his office.”

He stood there, gazing at John, for a few seconds more, then touched the card again as he gave John one last look, and set off back to the car.

John waited ten minutes before he moved.

Thinking. Always thinking. He was tired of thinking - of trying to understand. Tired of coping. Of _dealing_ with it. Tired of trying to get on with his life. His life had been boring and without direction before Sherlock, and after Sherlock it was - well, pointless, really. 

And that made no sense. 

Because Sherlock was - no. Sherlock _wasn’t_ \- no. Alright - Sherlock wasn’t his whatever the fuck people thought he’d been. His lover? God no. He hadn’t wanted that from Sherlock - hadn’t felt the slightest bit like knocking him against the wall and snogging him. Knocking him against the wall - yes. But not the rest of it. And he knew that with absolute certainty, didn’t he? He’d had his hands on Sherlock dozens of times. Stitching him up - head, shoulder, even his arse. Checking for injuries. He’d stripped him down a time or two to get him out of sodden clothing in the middle of winter, and had shared a bed with him in a crowded inn that had botched up their reservations. And not once had he had that feeling - that _urge_. It was Sherlock, for God’s sake, _Sherlock._ Not Sarah, or Rebecca, or Naomi. Not any of the women he’d dated those years at 221B. Not that any of those relationships had gone anywhere, not with Sherlock and his total inability to pick up on social clues.

So, given that Sherlock wasn’t - hadn’t been - his … _Jesus!_ There just wasn’t a single adequate word for what he _hadn’t_ been. Lover. Boyfriend. Life partner. Significant other. Spouse. He’d not been any of those things, yet he’d been _something_. Because John was mourning him. Mourning him like - Christ…like he _was_ those things. All of them. Even someone with his emotional range - even someone with _Sherlock’s_ \- could see that they’d had something. Something - different. Special. Something that had made him come alive after a long hibernation, a cold, cold winter. It was like - well, it was like _loving_ someone. Love without the physical want, the delicious coil of desire, the thrill of touch. 

No, John Watson could say unequivocally that he hadn’t wanted Sherlock like that. Hadn’t admired his physique. That being near him hadn’t made his heart race, or his palms sweat. He didn’t like men that way - any men. Not even Sherlock. 

Yet his loss had gutted him. Gutted him so thoroughly that he hadn’t worked a full day since. That his nightmares had returned. That his limp - his bloody psychosomatic limp - was back. That he’d moved back to a depressing bedsit and hadn’t seen even Mrs. Hudson in two months. All because he was grieving someone who hadn’t been _anyone_ \- none of those things that mattered. 

Yet had been _everyone_. _All_ of the things that mattered.

John Watson had been in love before.

Just after med school - Annie Soldano. Two years together, a year of it sharing a flat. She’d broken his heart and turned down his proposal, and he’d been devastated when she left him, because his heart wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. It was too full of her - of her laugh, her smile, her scent. The way he felt when he was with her. The thousand little things he knew about her that no one else knew, from the way she hugged her pillow at night to how she stirred her tea in a figure eight and blew on it even when it had cooled to tepid. 

He knew what love felt like. Knew how thoughts of that person filled your mind at the most unexpected times, and how worry for them tore at your heart and ate into your soul. He knew the feeling of emptiness at their loss - when you couldn’t look at the home you had shared without imagining the other there.

Annie curled in her rocking chair, glasses perched on the end of her nose, head buried in a book, wearing one of his jumpers to stave off the cold. Looking up at him as he bent down to kiss her, eyes showing how pleased she was to see him, sighing into his kiss as her hand caressed the back of his neck.

Emptiness.

Like two chairs, facing each other in the shadows. Like empty staircases, hollow with silence. Like coats that gather dust in the cupboard, violins muted, tea gone cold, warm blood stilled.

God he missed him.

How - how had it happened that he’d loved Sherlock like that but hadn’t wanted him? Hadn’t felt that pull of the flesh, that ache inside, that longing?

He remembered all too well how many people had thought - still thought - that he was gay. That Sherlock was his boyfriend. Lover. How actively he’d denied it, thrown up his hands in frustration. 

_Hello. That’s me you’re talking about. Me. John Watson. I like women._

_Not gay._

_I’m not gay._

_He’s not my boyfriend._

_We’re not together._

_It’s not like that._

All true. Every word. 

Except - well, except that “together” part.

 _Look at yourself, John Watson. Take a fucking look at yourself you pathetic excuse for a man. Sitting here on the cold ground with your arse in the grass, staring at his name on a polished slab of granite. On leave from your job - they gave you compassionate leave - family leave - for Christ’s sake. Because you lost someone._ You _lost him._

_He was yours to lose._

John got to his feet, slowly, favouring one leg, and brushed the grass off his trousers. His arse was cold, his leg stiff. It shouldn’t be bothering him again, but it was, and he hadn’t told anyone about it. Who was there to tell, anyway? He’d put off Greg and Molly both, and Harry, and couldn’t expect any comfort from Mrs. Hudson when he should be the one offering comfort to her instead. She’d lost a man who was as much a son to her as any man would ever be. 

“No more miracles, Sherlock.”

He moved forward, and grazed the stone with his right hand as he picked up the card Mycroft had left there with his left, scooting the two pence piece onto the stone for someone else to find.

John Watson didn’t really believe in therapy, no matter that his last therapist suggested he try his hand at blogging. Not the kind of therapy that licensed medical practitioners dished out, anyway. But if Mycroft was telling the truth, this particular therapist had seen Sherlock. Had - perhaps - seen _inside_ Sherlock. Impossible as it was to believe that Sherlock would ever have opened up to a stranger, John wanted to believe it, wanted to believe it badly enough to pick up the card and slip it into his pocket.

Mycroft Holmes was a practiced liar. But he’d offered proof of a sort - in Greg Lestrade.

John thought he might as well use him for transportation services as well and save cab fare.

_-At cemetery. Could use a ride home.-_

He looked at the words on the text app before hitting send. He’d been ignoring Greg’s texts for two months. He had no reason to expect Lestrade would pay the least bit attention to his pathetic cry for help now.

Except that he would. 

Of _course_ he would.

He hit send, and settled on a bench near the gate to wait for his ride.


	2. If Sherlock Had a Soul

Greg’s car pulled slowly through the cemetery gates and stopped in front of John’s bench. He didn’t get out of the car, or open the window. The car wasn’t marked, and didn’t have the Yard’s license plate. The windows were tinted, and John couldn’t see through, but he stood and walked to the front door, as casually as he could muster, pulled it open and slid inside.

“There’s more than one cemetery in London, you know.”

John shrugged. “Wouldn’t know, actually. Thanks for coming.”

“Sorry it took so long - was having a kip and didn’t hear the text come in right away.”

“It’s fine. Don’t apologise.”

“Right.” Lestrade pulled out of the cemetery and John pulled on his seatbelt. “Where’s home these days?” he asked, too casually.

John glanced sideways. He had no doubt that Lestrade knew exactly where he was living now. “Actually, I was thinking we might stop at the pub. Have a quick drink?”

He was entirely out of character and he knew it. He’d been avoiding contact with Lestrade, Molly, Mrs. Hudson and anyone and everyone associated with Sherlock - with his life the past few years. And even before that time, he’d have accepted a ride from Lestrade, but he’d never have asked for one.

He was pathetic. Pathetic because Lestrade, no doubt, thought he’d finally broken, asking for help, reaching out to his friends.

He thought he was on top of this, but suddenly wondered if he’d been had.

“Yeah - sure.” Lestrade glanced at the clock on the dashboard, but he didn’t seem bothered by the time. John should - the old John would - ask whether this was a good time - perhaps try to schedule for later - but John - this John - wanted to have this conversation now. He had a card in his pocket, and on that card was the name and phone number of someone who might know more about Sherlock than anyone else. Someone who’d been inside his head, hard as that may seem to believe. 

John knew that patient privacy extended beyond the grave, but he didn’t have a lot of other options. But he wouldn’t expose himself, take Mycroft’s bait, until he checked out his story.

Thus Lestrade.

“It’s not to be a quick drink, though,” Lestrade said, turning the car into the traffic and settling into the pace. He drove comfortably - a man accustomed to making his way about London in a car, familiar with the streets because his job demanded it. “I’m hungry - and even if you’re not, you’re eating too. You look like shite, John.”

It was the first acknowledgement of his appearance - and he probably hadn’t intended to say anything. John knew what he looked like. He wasn’t taking care of himself, and he’d had to belt his jeans to keep them up. He’d lost a stone since Sherlock died. Food has no appeal - cardboard in his mouth, clay in his stomach. He shaved when he felt like it - and he certainly hadn’t felt like it too often of late. In a back corner of his mind somewhere, he remembered the military precision with which he’d always approached personal hygiene. He _liked_ watching people try to hide their shock when they saw him now. Casual people, even. People who didn’t even matter.

Not that he could think of many who did these days.

“Sure,” he said, agreeing to a meal. He’d have to be amiable if he wanted Lestrade to talk. He’d poke at his food - eat enough of it to make Lestrade comfortable enough to keep talking. He could act. He wasn’t the actor Sherlock was - but he was certainly capable of doing what needed to be done to get information. 

In the most secret way, in the most private part of his being, he wanted to be all those things Sherlock was that annoyed the hell out of him, irritated him, even frightened him. He wanted to have secret rooftop encounters and his own homeless network and shoot holes in the wall and subsist on cat naps and biscuits. He could try out a new persona with Lestrade - Lestrade, who’d be treading cautiously with him. Who’d see him as something volatile, apt to explode if handled too roughly.

He’d figured this out. He wasn’t Sherlock’s clean-up crew now, nor his Boswell.

He just hadn’t banked on Lestrade turning the tables on him.

An hour later, he was staring at an empty plate and a half-empty pint glass - his second, and he was certainly thinking about a third. He’d not yet pulled the card from his pocket, yet there hadn’t been any awkward lulls in the conversation. Lestrade had been telling him about a puzzling and fascinating case - something Sherlock would have solved in a long, sleepless weekend - and Lestrade had pointed that out, not shying away from the mention of their old friend and comrade. He’d smiled fondly, and sadly, when he’d said it, but had moved right along to describe the case (which started thirty-five years ago with a baby snatching) and asked John’s opinion of some medical forensics. 

He was calm, and non-threatening. Friendly, but not demanding too much from John at all. Encouraging him to use his brain instead of delving into his emotions. Lestrade pushed a basket of chips toward him and made the “help yourself” gesture as he continued discussing the case - something about the murdered heiress and matching blood types but not fingerprints made John think _twins_ and then _it’s never twins_ \- and he took a chip from the basket and felt, for a moment, normal again.

It was an alien feeling, and it stretched his skin uncomfortably.

But when he reached the bottom of the pint, he took the card from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“Mycroft thinks I should see someone,” he said, scooting the card across the table casually, as if he wasn’t really considering it at all. 

Lestrade wasn’t in on it, then. He was obviously surprised, because he glanced at the card, a puzzled look on his face. 

“Mycroft Holmes gave you this?” he asked as he slid the card toward his side of the table with a single finger. He picked up the card and read it, and it was obvious even to John that he was buying a bit of time to gather his thoughts before he blurted out something - something unhelpful. “He sent it to you, then? In the post the old fashioned way?”

“He handed it to me in the cemetery - just before I called you,” John clarified. “Apparently, he’s got a GPS tracker on me - probably had them drop it in when I had that hernia surgery last year.”

He was joking, but even as he spoke, he realised that it wasn’t at all outside the realm of possibility that he was walking around with a GPS beacon inside his gut. He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly - and acutely - aware that _normal_ people with normal friends didn’t walk around worrying about whether they’d been surgically fitted with tracking devices.

 _Normal_ people didn’t run about London with Sherlock Holmes, either. _Normal_ people weren’t bloggers for the world’s only consulting detective.

God he never wanted to be normal again.

Lestrade placed the card back on the table. “She’s good. Works by referral only.” He picked up his pint glass and took a healthy swallow. “You thinking about calling her?”

John shrugged. “Don’t know.” He was a horrible play actor. He tried to sound casual and disinterested but he failed miserably. Already, he’d eaten a full meal, chatted with Lestrade for more than an hour and sat in a public place surrounded by people. That all added up to more social interaction today than he’d had since that last day in 221B, or in those upside down days that followed.

Lestrade apparently decided to play along. “Sherlock saw her, you know,” he said. He was looking past John at the door. Like Sherlock always had, Lestrade had taken the seat that afforded him a good view of the exit.

“Yeah - Mycroft mentioned that.” John took the card back and tucked it into his pocket. “He didn’t say much else, though.”

He left the statement open-ended. He was beginning to feel like the walls were closing in again, on edge, caged, now that the pleasantries were over and they were finally down to business. It worked to his advantage - Lestrade could sense his discomfort, and wanted this meeting to end well. Wanted there to be more meetings like this, John figured. 

It wasn’t too often that he remembered that other people besides himself missed Sherlock. People like Mrs. Hudson, of course, and Molly. But when Lestrade spoke next, John heard it in his voice, too.

“It was some time ago - before you came around,” he began. “You know what he was like - you’ve heard, anyway.”

He looked up and waited for John to acknowledge that yes, he knew about the drugs. John frowned and Lestrade took that for an affirmative. “He bungled a case. People died.”

“People?” John suspected there was more, here. Not that Sherlock was unfeeling, but people died all the time in Sherlock’s cases, sometimes after he got involved. He sincerely doubted that Sherlock himself had done the actual killing.

“Yeah.” Lestrade had that look on his face again. Like whatever he was thinking made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. He looked confused by it, contorted, almost. It wasn’t a good look on him. “Kids.”

“Oh.” John felt a fist clench in his gut. “Alright. I mean - no, it’s not alright...just...that’s enough. You don’t have to tell me the rest.”

Lestrade seemed relieved. He cleared his throat. “It helped. He didn’t want to go, but I told him he’d not be helping on any more cases until he got himself sorted out.” He laughed, dryly, then smiled at John. A genuine smile. “Can you imagine that poor doctor? I don’t have any way of proving it, but the story is she kicked him out of her office three times and he stormed out twice in the first two weeks. Jesus - I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than sit through a therapy session with Sherlock.”

There was a time when John would have agreed with Lestrade. Needles in his eyes or tooth extraction with a pair of rusty pliers or sitting through an international flight with a two year old behind him kicking his seat - any of those things better than sitting through a therapy session with Sherlock. But three months after losing him, he’d have agreed to any of those things, all of those things, with a smile on his face.

Lestrade seemed to understand.

“Yeah, I know. Me too.” He signaled the waiter and ordered them each another pint. “Look - the doctor’s good. But she’s not a miracle worker, John. You have to want the help, and I think Sherlock didn’t at first. He and Mycroft had a row you wouldn’t believe - and I know you think you _can_ believe it, but honestly - no.” 

“She helped him, though. Right? He was still working with you when I met him so things got better.”

“She helped him.” He took a long look at John from across the table, making John shift uncomfortably under the scrutiny. He instinctively knew the kid gloves were about to come off. Lestrade was his friend, their friend, though he could hardly expect to be treated like a friend anymore with his wholesale neglect of this and every other relationship in his life. “She can help you, John. But you know that doctor patient confidentiality - ”

John interrupted him with a raised hand. “Yeah - doctor here.” He wasn’t as offended as he thought he should be.

Lestrade nodded. “But she knew him, didn’t she? So she’ll understand where you’re coming from.”

John wasn’t so sure.

“We’ll do this again,” Lestrade said as they parted ways at the door. John had assured him he could make his way back on his own. He didn’t call the tiny efficiency he was renting home - he’d lost all sense of the word as he went about life on malfunctioning autopilot. “A week from Sunday - same place.”

John nodded and left without further comment. He appreciated Lestrade - coming out to the cemetery to get him, not giving him a talking to when he deserved one, not giving him those pitying looks so many cast his way. He hated the assumption that he was grief-stricken, that he’d lost half of his soul and most of his heart.

Even though he was, and he had.

He ignored a call from Harry and a text from Mycroft as he opened his laptop and looked up the therapist - not to get her contact information, but to dig a bit, find what was out there on her, what experiences other people had had. 

There was surprisingly little of interest, at least on the surface. Papers she’d written - he bookmarked several for later perusal as he was looking for something more immediate and tangible he could chew on. He was looking for a reason not to call her, but she was surprisingly drama free and had a solid professional and academic repuation. She was respected, renowned, and the words “trauma,” “PTSD,” and “traumatic loss” were peppered throughout the content he read. He began to scan URLs that were returned at the top of the page and eventually wandered down a rabbit hole into personality disorders. 

_Sociopath._

He swallowed, blinked to keep tears at bay - permanently, he didn’t cry because it was useless and pathetic - and read on until he stumbled upon a paper dealing with sexual orientation and identity written more than ten years ago, by Dr. Evantine Wohlberg.

He frowned. Bookmarked it.

He had a dilemma now. Did he want help? That kind of help? When it came with the possibility of falling down that particular rabbit hole?

He closed the laptop and placed Dr. Wohlberg’s card on top of it, then knelt beside the bed and drew out from beneath it a violin, packed safely inside its case. It wasn’t his, not officially, and Mycroft certainly knew he had it though he’d helped himself to it, more or less, before he’d left. He opened the case, as quietly and reverently as ever, and lifted out the violin, then sat on the bed and held it on his lap as he took up the bow.

John had been busy these past weeks, these weeks of self-imposed isolation, of ignoring texts and phone calls and mail. He’d watched countless hours of YouTube videos, and he could hold the bow and instrument properly, and produce sounds that approximated the notes of the scale. He could do those over and over and over again, and he put them together, roughly, inexpertly, into Twinkle Twinkle Little Star which, he had learned, was the most common first song that children learned on the violin.

He played softly, until his arms grew tired, but there was nothing else in this grey-toned and mixed up world that comforted him these days.

If Sherlock had a soul, it lived here, in this violin. 

But if John had one, it died out there on the pavement below Barts. 

His eyes caught the outline of the card, stark white against the black of his laptop.

The violin breathed for both of them, notes too slow, too mournful for the kind of life they’d lived, as he considered his next move.


	3. The Empty Spaces

Chapter 3

John carried the card Mycroft left for him with him all week.

The very existence of the card made it a particularly trying week, and even with the distraction of returning to work - albeit for all of two afternoons to do pediatric well-child check-ups - he never forgot the phone number in his pocket, though he couldn’t quite make himself call it. He spent nearly three days holed up in his room reading old army survival manuals and eating take-away from the mediocre Chinese restaurant across the street. He had an odd and niggling lark, lurking out somewhere in the back of his brain, that he’d go to Canada, or Alaska, perhaps get hired on a fishing boat, or just live in an abandoned bus in the woods eating berries and growing a beard until he went crazy.

Some days he thought he was already halfway there.

On Tuesday, while grinding out yet another round of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” a song he hoped he’d never hear again once he learned something proper, he broke a violin string, and sitting there on his bed with the instrument in his lap, he died a little bit inside. He’d seen Sherlock change a broken string time and again, but he’d not thought to bring extra strings with him when he’d taken the violin from 221B, and he knew he’d have to watch hours of instructional videos before he trusted himself to do it without damaging the violin. Then he’d have to tune the damn thing - he did a fair enough job with it now, mainly because he didn’t really much know or care if it sounded off. _He_ sounded off no matter, and he somehow recognized that the exercise of playing the instrument was, at least for now, more about the feel of the instrument against his chin, how it reverberated in his soul, than the sound it produced.

He attempted to stay away from the cemetery, to avoid Mycroft, and his spies, human or otherwise, and because he knew he wouldn’t possibly be able to sit and stare at Sherlock’s headstone without seeing that white card lying on top of it and thinking of the call he hadn’t yet placed. He made it ‘til midweek, then broke down, full of excuses he recognised as such. It was a sunny day, the earth was warm, he needed fresh air. Sherlock would have thought him foolish, but he’d always liked doing things that irked Sherlock, hadn’t he?

He should have known Mycroft was still watching him.

The coin he’d left atop the tombstone was still there, but it was now weighing down another white card. 

“How did you put up with him?” John asked, crouching down in front of the stone and leaning his forehead against it. “Living in the same city with him is nearly impossible - I can’t even imagine living in the same house.” 

He imagined - didn’t he? - the rumble of agreement from deep within the stone. 

“He thinks I need help. He gave me a name - Dr. Wohlberg - he told me you saw her. Lestrade confirmed it and he seems to think I should go.” His voice trailed off and he ran his hand slowly over the letters engraved in the stone. “I’m thinking about it. Maybe I can turn on the charm and find out what you were all about.” He sighed. “I know, high-functioning sociopath.” His fingers continued their cold, tactile exploration of Sherlock’s name. ‘But that’s not all you were.”

He stood, using the stone for leverage, and frowned at the upside down card before resignedly picking it up and turning it over. He pocketed the coin this time – he just might get rich if this was to be the way Mycroft chose to communicate with him from now on.

The card, to his surprise, was not for Dr. Wohlberg.

It was, instead, a business card for a music shop offering violin repair service. Handwritten in small, tight, and very precise handwriting at the top of the card were the words “Sherlock dealt only with Paolo.”

John swallowed. He didn’t even bother to assume it was coincidence, or wander how Mycroft knew about the broken string. He wondered, for a heartbeat, if this was Mycroft’s ploy to get the instrument back. But no - Mycroft had only to ask, hadn’t he? Or to dispatch one of his minions to take it back while John was away. He didn’t for a second think Mycroft would respect his privacy or uphold the law against breaking and entering if he truly wanted something. No - this was something else entirely.

A way of saying _I know you have it - so you’d best take good care of it. I’m watching you._

And wasn’t nudging John in the direction of the service Sherlock used a way of ensuring that the instrument would get the best care? Or any care at all?

And now he had two cards. Two fucking cards with two names, and two phone numbers. Two people who had known Sherlock - had been somehow connected to an intimate part of him. 

His mind.

His music.

Two things John would never have again.

He visited the shop on Friday morning.

He’d planned on calling Dr. Wohlberg first thing that day, as he had the day before, and the day before that. But when he glanced at his laptop the next morning and saw the two cards sitting there, he’d picked up the second one instead of the first, then turned it over and over in his hand while flipping through television channels. His mobile beeped as a text message came in - Lestrade, reminding him of their date on Sunday - and he frowned, wishing he hadn’t committed, then dropped the phone on the bed and plugged in the kettle. But even tea didn’t settle his restlessness that morning, and the next thing he knew, he was on the corner hailing a cab - they never seemed to see him, did they? -clutching the violin tightly against his chest.

He felt ill at ease out on the street with the instrument. His possession of it seemed so tenuous to begin with, and with all of London milling about, potentially brushing by him as he hurried to the address on the card, he felt as if he was inviting disaster. A random mugging, leaving it behind in a cab, being hit by a bicycle as he crossed….

He stopped in his tracks as his eyes automatically rose to scan the roof of a nearby building, then he shook himself, leaned against a wall, and took a steadying breath. 

Wouldn’t that be his luck? Coincidence his arse.

He found the shop rather easily, and ducked into it before he could talk himself out of it. It was just exactly as he had imagined it - dark, and quiet, with stringed instruments on the walls and an old-fashioned counter running the length of the rear. Ornate wooden shelving units held supplies and sheet music, and the entire place had the air of an old and comfortable parlour, with creaky floors and worn carpet and comfortable chairs in the corners. 

A man of indeterminable age, tall and thin and quiet, with a tangle of dark curls that made John’s stomach lurch sideways when he looked up at him, spoke from behind the counter.

“Repair? Let’s see what you have, then.”

John approached the counter, trying out what he hoped was an amiable smile.

“Actually, I was told to ask for Paolo,” he began, placing the case on the counter but keeping his hands atop it protectively. 

“I’m Paolo.” The man smiled at him encouragingly, probably sensing his discomfort, and extended a hand. “Who told you to ask for me, then? One of our regulars?”

John nodded. He wasn’t about to attempt an explanation. “I inherited this,” he said, and that was explanation enough, he thought, of why he owned a very expensive violin and had no idea how to change a string properly, or even which strings to buy to do so. “I’d like to play it - but it’s got a broken string.”

“If you can’t replace a string, you certainly don’t play,” Paolo said, giving John a good once-over, and likely judging his short, squat fingers lacking and not suitable for the violin anyway. “But you will. You need a good teacher, is all.” He seemed to forgive John’s shortcomings as he took hold of the handle of the case and tugged it gently forward. John let it go, albeit reluctantly, and Paolo undid the buckles and opened the case.

John saw it - the immediate recognition in his eyes. Eyes that softened as he gazed at the violin, then moved to John again, filled with something that hadn’t been there before. 

“This is Sherlock’s violin.” The man spoke very softly, almost reverently. He looked at the violin again, wistfully, perhaps, then lifted his eyes, and smiled reassuringly. “And you are Dr. Watson, of course. I assumed - well, I assumed this beauty was in his brother’s possession. He doesn’t play, and has no interest in learning. It would be such a disservice for it to sit in a vault, wouldn’t it?”

He didn’t challenge John’s possession of it, not in words, or action, or even facial expression. 

And John, wary, suspicious, John, felt his defenses melt a little.

“It would. But I’ve got it now,” he managed. He was careful to not say _it’s mine_. “Could you replace the string, then?” He watched as Paolo lifted the violin from its case and examined it. “Maybe show me how it’s done?”

And Paolo did. He didn’t waste time or energy on mindless chatter as he worked. John watched, and when Paolo was finished, he promptly removed the new string and handed string and instrument to John, then stepped him through the process. He instructed as he went, basic information about the violin, and how it was put together, and the care needed to keep it in top condition. He seemed to trust John implicitly, and for that John was grateful, no matter how puzzled he was by that trust.

And when the violin was returned to its case, and John had pocketed the spare set of strings Paolo had given him, Paolo took a business card from beneath the counter and wrote something across the back of it, then handed it to John.

“Monday or Thursday evenings - I’ve an opening at seven o’clock. Lessons last an hour.”

“Lessons?” There was no way John could afford lessons - especially from a place that Sherlock had frequented and that Mycroft recommended. 

“Violin lessons,” clarified Paolo in case John had somehow missed his intent. 

He’d just keep making do with YouTube. He shook his head. “I’m sorry - I - I don’t have much time, really. Free time, I mean.” He vacillated, because the idea of lessons, of learning to play the violin - Sherlock’s violin - appealed to him at a level he couldn’t really name. He wanted it - to cut through all the frustration of self-teaching in watching instructional on-line videos. To be able to ask questions. To make something come out of the violin that was more than recognizable - though that alone had been a considerable break-through. To produce something pretty. Moving. Something to calm his mind and chase away the rainclouds. 

No. What he really wanted was to fall asleep to the strains of Sherlock’s violin, to wake to it as if it had played in the background through hours of slumber and dream.

“Everyone has time to do something they must and something they want,” Paolo sagely advised, His lips quirked as he lifted the violin again and handed it to John. “Play a scale for me, then.” He raised a finger as John opened his mouth. “Humor me, Dr. Watson. Believe me, I will have heard worse.”

“Don’t bet on it,” John mumbled. But he took the violin nonetheless, and Paolo handed him the bow. He felt utterly self-conscious as he positioned the instrument - he had no illusions that he cut a dashing figure holding the violin, that he looked natural, or at ease. But he gave himself points for sheer ballsiness as he took up the bow as if he knew exactly what he was doing and ground out a scale as he’d practiced a thousand times already.

Paolo watched, arms folded, leaning against the wall behind the counter, and as soon as he finished, stepped forward.

“Good - now position yourself as if you’re about to play the first note.”

John obeyed the direction, feeling a bit foolish as he dropped his chin on the chinrest and lifted the bow.

“Alright - hold that position - one moment.” Paolo walked out from behind the counter and, scooting up directly behind him, closer than was socially proper, manipulated John’s position, working mainly with the hand that held the bow - scooting his fingers apart, changing the angle, encouraging him with quiet murmurs to not grip it so tightly. He lifted his elbow, gently pressed against John’s neck, making him to cant his head….just….so.

John jerked at the touch of his fingers. 

_Relax, John. Breathe._

And then, apparently satisfied, Paolo stepped back.

“Now. Close your eyes. Play.”

John, feeling foolish, closed his eyes and played.

Even his unpracticed ear could hear the difference. 

He opened his eyes when he finished, and looked over at Paolo, both pleased and surprised.

“And _that_ is why you will come on Thursday at seven,” Paolo said with a smile that John couldn’t help but return. “You hold a very special instrument, Dr. Watson. It will be my honour to teach you how to handle it properly, and make music to fill the empty spaces.”

“I - alright. Thursday.” He smiled, and tucked the appointment card in his pocket with the others. “Thank you. I’ll – I’ll see you then.”

He made it to the door before Paulo’s voice stopped him.

“Dr. Watson?”

John turned. “Yes?”

“I’m very sorry – about Sherlock. For your loss.”

John blinked, opened his mouth, the standard rejoinders on his lips. 

_He wasn’t my boyfriend. We weren’t together. It wasn’t like that. I’m not gay._

The thoughts died away as this stranger faced him, looking genuinely sorry, and John nodded instead.

_Music to fill the empty spaces._

“Thank you,” he said, his voice barely audible.

He turned quickly, and left the shop before Paolo could say anything more.


	4. All Roads Lead to Sherlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that I'm not a therapist, nor a psychologist/psychiatrist, nor too very familiar with therapy of this type. It's fiction, and no amount of research will assure that I present a therapy session accurately or realistically. I'll do my best.

Chapter 4

By the time John saw Dr. Wohlberg, he’d had three violin lessons with Paolo, two more dinners with Lestrade and had visited the cemetery again five times. He’d found a note on the stone the second time back, folded in half and weighted with a fifty pence piece. 

_Paolo may send me the bill. - M_

He pocketed both coin and note, shaking his head, surprised at Mycroft’s audacity. Paolo was refusing payment, at least for now, claiming to John that the ten minutes he played Sherlock’s violin at the end of each lesson was all the payment he needed or wanted.

“I think Paolo is using me to get to your violin,” John said, sitting down and leaning back against the headstone. Sitting like this, back to Sherlock, so to speak, reminded him of stakeouts, when they’d been crammed together in a too-small space, back to back, looking out in different directions. “Not that he’d ever try to take it - that’s not what I mean.” He shifted, then turned his head so that his cheek rested against the stone. “It’s just that after every lesson, he plays it. He’s so polite - he gives me this little bow and says ‘May I?’ and I say ‘Of course.’ Then he takes your violin and Jesus, Sherlock - it’s like watching you play. He’s gorgeous when ….”

He trailed off. Where the hell had _that_ come from? He pressed the back of his head against the stone and looked at the sky. Head against stone. Stone pavement. Stone cold. Stone dead.

 _Damn it_. He pressed his eyes closed, willing the gruesome thoughts away, and thought, instead, of how the violin felt against his cheek, and of the sound of Paolo playing it, asking its forgiveness after John’s tortured attempts to coax it to life. 

“You’d have been a horrible teacher, you know? If I’d ever have asked you to teach me. You’d have had no patience at all - and you’d have hated all the mistakes. You’d have snatched that violin out of my hands a dozen times the first hour to show me how it’s properly done. It would never have worked.” He flexed one foot, then the other, thinking he was getting too old for this, and that he should have a bench built here - or better yet, have Mycroft commission one – something ridiculously ornate with weeping angels that Sherlock would have detested. He wondered if his chair was still at 221B and if the cemetery would object too much to having it installed here under a special canopy to keep off the rain, and if the legs would sink into the dirt until he was basically sitting on the ground again. “Of course, if you were here, I’d not have to learn to play. I could be sitting at home thinking of catchy names for our cases with _you_ playing like a maniac behind me instead of taking the time to eat or sleep.”

He didn’t mention that he wasn’t doing much eating and sleeping these days himself.

At least he was doing more eating than he had been - Lestrade seemed to have something to do with that. And it wasn’t limited to the occasional lunch or dinner meet-up at the pub. Now Mrs. Hudson was in on the game as well. And how the _hell_ was he supposed to say no to Mrs. Hudson?

Sherlock hadn’t believed in coincidence, but Mrs. Hudson turning up at the Ribald Rooster (Sherlock’s name for the place - John couldn’t even remember the real one anymore) while they were finishing up that second Sunday would have put the nail in the coincidence coffin. She’d been coached. She didn’t shout at him, or cry much at all, or hug him too many times, and she didn’t censure him – even kindly – for not having visited. Not even once.

“I know it’s hard, John. It’s gut-wrenching for me every time I glance up those stairs or do a dust up of his things. But if you won’t come by for tea- and I understand that, I really do - why couldn’t we at least meet for lunch or tea from time to time?”

It hadn’t occurred to him just then, but it hit him when he was back home, flat on his back on his narrow bed staring up at the ceiling, that Mrs. Hudson was dusting 221B. Dusting _his things_. 

What were Sherlock’s things doing in 221B three and a half months after he died? 

He’d concluded, after a good deal of consideration, that Mycroft hadn’t wanted the detritus of his brother’s life, and had left everything exactly where it was, abandoning it, in effect, so that Sherlock’s left-behind possessions became the landlord’s property.

Mrs. Hudson’s things now, dutifully dusted. Did she speak to Billy the skull? Pin recipes to the case wall? Store liver and kidneys and tongue in the refrigerator?

Later, after their first meeting for tea on a Friday afternoon, she’d start bringing him things that were once Sherlock’s. Small things that fit in her purse or pocket, rarely of any value at all, but always something that threatened to bring tears to his eyes, and sometimes did. 

His therapist would tell him she thought it was just fine to accept them.

“It’s just his old key ring, and I was going to throw it out, but I thought you might like it, John. I left the key in case you ever need a place to stay - I’m not planning to rent it out again. He left me a bit of money, you know - enough to cover the rent for three or four years.”

No. He didn’t know. Sherlock hadn’t left him any money - but then again, he’d not have had time to change his will. He probably had made provisions for Mrs. Hudson ages ago. And even if he’d had time, and forethought, why would he have left anything substantial to his flatmate?

_Fool. Don’t be jealous of Mrs. Hudson. It’s not the same with you. Not the same at all._

He was sitting on a bench in the park ten blocks from Dr. Wohlberg’s office after his first appointment. She hadn’t invited him to call her by her given name, and he was fine with the more formal mode of address. It suited her. He’d walked here, feet moving automatically as he let out a breath he felt he’d been holding the past hour.

The past four months.

Alright. That wasn’t so bad. Rather like the first violin lesson. Each of them learning a bit about the other, getting comfortable in each other’s presence. Nothing too hard, or too deep. Scales. Learning how to hold the violin, what all the parts were called, what sort of touch worked best. Bow to strings. The angle, rather like the direction of the conversation. Fighting - internally - for control.

He could do it.

Except it was impossible, insurmountable. The distance between here and there, present and future, starting point and goal.

He’d never play like Paolo. Never ever play like Sherlock. He’d never again feel at home in his own skin. It felt ridiculous to be like this, half of a team, tossing the ball against a wall over and over and over again.

They’d really not gone anywhere deep or disturbing or revealing today. They’d started out talking about privacy, without specifically mentioning Mycroft and his propensity to ignore privacy statutes, and had ended up talking about Sherlock.

Some surprise. All roads lead to Sherlock Holmes.

“I’m rather old school,” she had said, holding up the pen in her left hand then tapping it on the legal pad beside her when he’d asked who’d see his file. “I jot down only a few pertinent notes for the record.” She looked at John a long moment, then smiled. “I trust very few with this information, Dr. Watson, and encourage you to keep my little secret.” She lowered her voice, and looked him in the eye. “I have an excellent memory - some have called it eidetic. But it isn’t. I have a way of compartmentalizing data - facts, faces, sound bites, images. An organisational system. A mental card catalogue.” Her expression was neutral, yet John knew she was watching him intently. And how could he help staring back, mouth threatening to drop open as he understood what she was saying, what she was telling him.

“You taught him.” 

He was no less brilliant, in John’s mind, for not having come upon the idea on his own.

“I introduced him to the concept,” she said, not naming names. They both knew they were talking about Sherlock. “He did all the work himself, crafted it into an art form, I understand.”

“He called it his Mind Palace.” He spoke quietly, wondering how long she’d let the conversation stay on Sherlock.

She smiled softly. “I know. It was designed to help him sort out some difficult things, but he evolved it so fluidly. I thought it was a brilliant construct. He was quite gifted.”

Nothing in her demeanor suggested that Sherlock had been a particularly difficult patient.

John nodded, swallowing against the lump that rose in this throat. “He was. He could access almost anything he’d learned, unless he’d deleted it.” He shifted in his chair. He had a sudden desire to check his mobile, to do something with his hands. He picked up the water she’d offered him when he’d come in and took a sip. “He deleted the solar system.”

She raised an eyebrow in interest. “I suppose even the gifted have limited hard drive space,” she said.

“He wasn’t a computer,” John blurted. 

They stared at each other and Dr. Wohlberg cleared her throat.

“No. No he wasn’t. And I apologize for that analogy. You’ve heard it before, then?”

“It wasn’t relevant – the solar system….”

He had a sudden flash of Sherlock falling and the world going black.

When the hour ended, they’d talked quite a bit about Sherlock - or John had. He tried not to think about it too much as he scheduled his next appointments, and tucked the reminder card into his wallet after watching the assistant write his name in an appointment book.

“Are you going to enter that in your scheduling program?” he asked. “Will I get an e-mail reminder?”

“Would you like an e-mail reminder?” asked the man, who was, in fact, sitting in front of a computer. “Or would you prefer leaving your appointment in the book only?” He looked at John expectantly.

“The book is fine,” said John after a short pause as the penny dropped. “I’ve got my appointment card.” He patted his pocket and made his way out the door.

There was still the matter of the billing, of course. Mycroft had said that Sherlock’s estate would pay for the therapy. Would the offer still stand if Mycroft wasn’t able to check his progress in the way he was accustomed to? 

He couldn’t worry about that now. He’d just met the person responsible for Sherlock’s mind palace. He’d just spent an entire hour talking about Sherlock with a person who had been inside his mind - who understood his brilliance. Gifted, she had said. He had no illusions that the sessions to come would be easy, or comfortable, or that she’d share anything more about Sherlock than what had come out of this introductory session. But he already knew something he hadn’t known, something about Sherlock. 

It was worth going back. 

If that’s what the goal of this session had been, she could count it as successful.

He sat in the park, hashing it all out in his mind. 

This was good. It was all good. He was doing something. Working again. Seeing a therapist. Taking violin lessons. Meeting up with old friends. 

Things were _better_. So what if he still had nightmares? If he was self-medicating to get a good night’s sleep? If he spent hours in the cemetery talking to a dead man? So what if he avoided Barts and Baker Street and hadn’t opened his blog since that day or looked at a woman? So what if what he wanted was Sherlock?

Fuck - not wanted like _that_. But wanted him. Wanted him _back_. Wanted his life back - _their_ life back. 

Fuck him fuck him fuck him. Now that he was gone, and wasn’t around to ruin every relationship with a woman John ever started, John wasn’t even _looking_ at women.

He squared his shoulders, sat up straighter, took out his mobile so he appeared to be doing something other than staring at passersby. He watched two dozen or so people walk by his bench over the next five minutes. Men. Women. He noticed the women - all shapes and sizes and ages. Mums pushing prams and women coming home from work and joggers and a woman his age pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair. 

The men were - well, men. Not so very interesting, though one in particular caught his eye - one that was tall, dark-haired, wearing well-cut clothes and talking quickly on his mobile as he hurried by.

_I like women. I notice women. I like their shapes. Their eyes. Their smiles._

But…

_I liked Sherlock. His eyes. His smile. His soddding Belstaff and his stupid hat and the way my heart raced when we ran through the alleys and how he always always got me to make the tea and do the grocery shopping._

“Of course you did, you idiot,” he whispered to himself, standing up and tucking his mobile away. “He was your friend. Your best friend. Your flatmate. You worked with him. Spent hours of your day with him. Every day.”

_Yet you’re grieving like a widower._

And that was fine. It had to be fine - for now. Because things didn’t always fit in a nice tight box, did they? Especially not when it came to Sherlock Holmes.

Yes. Things were better. John could see - somewhere off on the horizon - a glimmer of his old life, his old self. A steady job. A girlfriend. Pub nights with Lestrade. Tea with Mrs. Hudson. 

_Violin lessons with Paolo. Therapy with Dr. Wohlberg. Conversations with Sherlock in the cemetery._

Somehow, those last things had a hell of a lot more appeal than the former. 

Maybe there was no going back. Maybe Sherlock had changed him forever.

Maybe there was no middle ground. Maybe, John thought, as he idly watched two more women jog by, there was safe and sane and steady, or there was Sherlock.


	5. Before Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a rough approximation of canon, with a spin on the relationship at Sherlock's return due to what John goes through in the chapters to date. In short - John is with Mary when Sherlock returns, but at a very different place emotionally and mentally than in canon. 
> 
> Just a note as Mary is mentioned at last in this chapter - it was bound to happen, and is necessary for the plot.

Six months after Sherlock died, John was seeing Dr. Wohlberg once a week and working a regular, if still part-time, schedule at the clinic. Money was tight, but he had enough to pay his bills and stock his small refrigerator and eat the occasional dinner out with Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson, and twice now with a small group from work. Paolo was still insisting that the pleasure of playing Sherlock’s violin was all the payment he needed for the weekly lessons. John thought he needed quite a bit more, if only to compensate for having to sit in a very small room and listen to John play.

Paolo, however, simply smiled and assured John he was improving. Great masters weren’t made overnight, he said, no matter how lovely the instrument they were learning to play.

John laughed. His laugh was still dry, and cynical, and rarely reached his eyes. But, he thought, it was an honest laugh, not trying to be anything it wasn’t. That he wasn’t. Great masters? he’d repeated. And Paolo had grinned at him. “We can’t all be Sherlock, John. If everyone was Sherlock, there wouldn’t be nearly enough Johns in the world.” 

His eyes said that he thought the world could use more Johns. No one seemed to think the world needed more Sherlocks. One was enough – if only that one hadn’t been snuffed out against the pavement.

Still, self deprecation or not, John was playing better. He had become comfortable with Paolo invading his personal space to adjust an elbow, or a finger. He dutifully submitted to the relaxation exercises Paolo forced him to do - and indeed, did along with him - at the start of each lesson. Controlled breathing, a type of guided meditation to clear his mind, to relax his hands, his neck, his shoulders. He _felt_ the music now - not every time, but sometimes. And he doggedly persisted, even though he’d never be a master, never play as Sherlock had.

He’d never solve crimes like Sherlock had, never be a son to Mrs. Hudson. Yet Lestrade had taken to discussing perplexing cases with him, even bringing photographs, or forensic and medical reports for him to study while they finished a pint after dinner. And Mrs. Hudson so earnestly wanted him to arrive at a place he’d never get to, that he hadn’t even known existed a few months ago. A place called acceptance. _She_ knew, even though he didn’t, and just a week ago she’d brought him another trinket, something the hoover had picked up when she was sweeping under Sherlock’s bed. 

“I thought you might like these back, John.” They were sitting at a corner table in the back of a pub around the corner from 221B – as close as he’d get to his old home – and she reached into her handbag, rooting around in the bottom until she found what she was looking for, then pressing a familiar set of dog tags into his hand. She cupped her hand over the top of his and gave him a tremulous smile. “He’s no use for them anymore, and I know they meant a great deal to you for you to have trusted them to his keeping.”

He stared at the dog tags he’d worn throughout his military career, then closed his hand around them and swallowed. His dog tags. Decidedly his. As familiar as the nose on his face, as the scar on his shoulder. Not in the old cigar box with his other mementos at the bottom of the packing crate he’d hauled out of 221B six months ago.

He’d never given them to Sherlock. Never even shown them to Sherlock.

But the undeniable reality was that Sherlock had had them, had taken them without John’s leave. The why could only be surmised, but John couldn’t _not_ see what it meant, and he tucked the knowledge of this _sentiment_ away in his mind, but kept the dog tags in his pocket, a sort of lucky charm, a talisman of what would never be.

Therapy, it turned out, was to be had in many places outside Dr. Wohlberg’s office.

ooOOOoo

John moved through the grieving process in fits and starts, sometimes stalling, sometimes in reverse, sometimes straight through like a runaway locomotive. While he didn’t miss Sherlock any less, he was more easily distracted from macabre, dead-end thoughts, more likely to leave the confines of his tiny apartment, take notice of happenings outside his personal space.

His obsession with the cemetery, with Sherlock’s final resting place, continued. A half dozen therapy sessions with Dr. Wohlberg had already centered on this - on his need to be here, on his continuing reliance on one-sided conversations with a dead man. If Dr. Wohlberg had an opinion one way or the other on his cemetery visits, she’d never expressed it to him and, fearing her answer, he’d never asked for it. And while he visited the cemetery, and spoke to the headstone, or the wind, or the clouds above, the all-consuming grief had leached out of his bones, settling into a sleeping sorrow beneath his skin. 

Sorrow, John thought, was less painful than grief. Sorrow allowed him to see beyond himself, yet it coloured the rest of the world in blues and greys and stole the warmth of the sun.

“My mother died when I was twenty-four,” John told Dr. Wohlberg one Tuesday afternoon. “I was having dinner with her and she dropped in her seat - massive coronary. I was in med school - I should have been able to do something. At least to see it coming. But I couldn’t. Didn’t.” Six months into therapy with her, and he’d finally come around to the question. “I was devastated. It was sudden and completely unexpected. I functioned on auto-pilot for months. It was horrible. But it was nothing like this.”

“Nothing?” The doctor kept her focus on him, waited patiently as he considered.

“No - that’s not right.” John blew out a frustrated breath. “It was a lot like this. The overwhelming loss. The guilt. The finality. But this is - this is _more_.”

They sat, breathing the same air, comfortable in this waiting game.

“You’ve lost friends before, John.”

They’d spoken of this, in a general sense. Afghanistan. The wounded he’d treated. The injured he’d lost. Comrades, friends. Brothers.

“Yeah.” He paused to find words adequate to the feeling. “But Sherlock was different.”

They smiled, shared camaraderie. They’d each known Sherlock. Understood what an understatement that was.

“A best friend, then.” Her face was neutral now - the same face she’s worn for six months save those occasional, enigmatic smiles. Except there was something in her eyes he couldn’t decipher, could not read.

He latched on to the words, life line that they are, or seemed to be.

“Yeah. A best friend.” The words were unfamiliar, in tandem, on his tongue. _Best_ friend. He’d had a best friend once, as a child, and they’d spent the summers wandering the neighborhood, having adventures and misadventures, scheming, planning, together from sun up to sun down.

He wondered where Robert Koch was these days.

“The sort of friend who’d be your best man, then. At your wedding.”

A picture of Sherlock in morning jacket and top hat came to mind, deep blue ascot, maybe green. Standing beside him, both of them holding their top hats. John nervous, Sherlock talking a mile a minute, so only John could here, deducing the guests, or the minister, or - this rang more true - the bride herself.

Sherlock standing at his left elbow, unnaturally quiet, as the bride, resplendent, on her father’s arm, proceeded down the aisle.

Wrong, wrong, all bloody wrong.

“Right.” John choked on the word. “At my wedding.”

Had he really not thought of it, not until that moment? 

He was nearly forty, and hadn’t really spent much time these last ten years contemplating a married future. The war had come, the injury, then Sherlock, then … this. He’d had down times before - being invalided out. Pain, boredom, depression. A sense of drifting through days, aimless, a misshapen balloon, leaden, tethered too close to the ground.

“Your wedding,” repeated Dr. Wholberg, bringing John back to the here and now. “Sherlock.”

The hour was nearly over and he put it to bed. “I don’t think I’m the marrying kind,” he said, at last. “But if I were - had been - yeah. Sherlock would have been there.” His smile was forced as he continued. “I doubt my bride would have appreciated him much, though. Most of them couldn’t get past the body parts in the fridge.” Most of them – all of them – hadn’t passed muster with Sherlock.

She nodded, and jotted something on her notepad, and John gathered up his things a few moments later, but as he walked to the park, and sat on his thinking bench to run it all over in his mind, he knew, without a doubt in the world, that there’d never have been a wedding to someone else while Sherlock was alive.

But Sherlock wasn’t alive. 

He’d loved Sherlock. Loved him. All the evidence was there and no one disputed this, or tried to dampen it, or call it something else entirely. No one called it anything at all – not with words. But Mrs. Hudson knew. And Lestrade. And bloody fucking Mycroft.

He’d loved Sherlock Holmes.

And Sherlock - Sherlock had stolen his dog tags.

ooOOOoo

Three more months and he could say it. To Dr. Wohlberg. To himself.

“I was in love with him.”

The thing is - the tense was all wrong. The man might be ashes and dust, but the feeling was posthumously named, acknowledged, and was not at all ready to be boxed up with the flotsam and jetsam of those brief years in 221B. 

A year after Sherlock jumped from the roof of St. Bart’s, John started off most mornings with a strong cup of coffee, a walk to the corner to purchase coffee and the newspaper, and thirty minutes with the violin. Work, then, and therapy some days - only every other week now - and violin lessons, and still the regular meet-ups with Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. He’d helped solve a cold case a few weeks ago, and had the warmest, deepest sense of satisfaction he’d felt since _that day_ , and he sat in front of Sherlock’s grave and described how he’d done it - the clues, the evidence, the pasty colour of skin and the residue found on the fingers.

“it would never have been a cold case had you been on it,” he’d told Sherlock. 

He thought Sherlock approved - of his own success, and of his acknowledgement that Sherlock’s skills were by far greater, that he could probably solve cold cases from beyond the grave.

Some things, though, John didn’t voice here in the cemetery, under the probable scrutiny of Mycroft’s cameras and microphones.

The books he’d read, the journal publications, on sexual orientation. He wasn’t sure where he fell on the spectrum, but he knew now he had the capacity to love anyone, regardless of gender, because he had loved Sherlock, and could have spent his life with him. Thinking of him as more than a brilliant mind, or an irritating thorn in his side, or an exasperating flatmate and friend, was entirely possible now. Thinking of what might have been, or could have been, had he been more self aware. More honest. 

Had Sherlock been.

He spent entirely too much time trying to suss out Sherlock. But there were no boxes that were Sherlock-shaped, no easy categories. Asexual? Labels were irrelevant when pinned on dead men, and not terribly relevant, he found, on living breathing beings like himself. 

He looked at men now, when they passed in the park, or on the street, or at the pub, but nothing seemed to spark. Later - later he would understand that no other man could outshine Sherlock.

But before later, there was Mary.


	6. Resurrected

“I’m not really sure how to do this, Sherlock. I mean, you’re dead, after all.”

John shifted, rubbed his hip, then leaned forward and ran his hands across the lettering engraved into the smooth surface of the stone. It felt good to be here again, good to be crouched on this familiar piece of earth, thick with grass now after all this time.

Two years. 

God. How was that even possible?

He leaned forward, as he used to do, back in the day when the pain was raw and untamed, and rested his forehead on the polished granite. He closed his eyes, imagining, as he did, the pulsing of a beating heart, the whisper of breath in the wind.

“You’re not coming back, Sherlock.” His fingers traced the rough-cut letters of Sherlock’s name. “And if there’s a bloody afterlife, you’d better damn well be there for me, because my life is about to become pretty predictable. I used to think I hated that. But it’s what I need. And I need to tell you that, because I’d take you in a heartbeat, Sherlock… _all_ of you...but you’re not here. And she is.”

He pressed his lips together, squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly, resting his head against the cold, silent stone for several long minutes. Finally, he exhaled, blowing out a breath filled with old regret, and reached into his jacket pocket.

“I brought these for you. I don’t want to keel over from a coronary in twenty years and have Mary pack them away in a box for Oxfam. They’re yours, as I see it, so the best I can do is leave them here with you now.”

He dropped the dog tags at the base of the marker, then opened his pocket knife and began to work. Carefully, he peeled back the grass, then dug out a tight hole beneath it. He dropped the tags, chain and all, in the hole, covered them with the displaced dirt, then carefully pressed the sod back in place.

He stood then, rising to his feet with some difficulty after the long time spent crouched down, wondering if he’d ever leave this place without the familiar, mournful lump in his throat.

Out of habit, he glanced at the top of the stone. He smiled, surprised and amused, and picked up the pound coin resting there. He dropped it into his pocket, fishing out a wrapped butterscotch, and leaving it in the coin’s place.

They’d left off leaving cards and notes months ago. 

“Your brother’s buying on stag night,” John said to the air. “I’m not inviting him, mind you. I’ll have Mrs. Hudson loan me the skull for the night, so you’ll be represented. I can’t imagine having a stag night without you.”

He let out another huff of air. This felt a lot like saying goodbye. He hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, or to stretch out the visit so long. 

Finally, he stepped back, staring at the name and dates on the stone. His eyes drifted down to the spot where he’d buried his dog tags. It was indiscernible, well-hidden. The tags would remain buried there, would rust away to dust.

And that was fine with John. As it should be. 

He stood there, blinking in the sun, a voice wafting across his memories.

_Afghanistan or Iraq?_

He straightened - shoulders back, chin up.

And almost without thinking, he raised his hand to his forehead and saluted. 

Sherlock might scoff at the gesture, but to John, it was as intimate as a lover’s kiss.

ooOOOoo

A week and a lifetime later, John couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what to do first.

Sherlock very likely needed medical attention.

As did John himself. His hand was swollen and bleeding, and his heart felt like it wouldn’t settle into its proper rhythm. His hip and thigh throbbed as if they’d been pummeled by a herd of elephants, and blood was soaking into his mustache from his nose, which had fallen victim to Sherlock’s head in the scuffle on the pavement outside the restaurant.

Mary, who should need calming, seemed to be taking this better than either of them. She was leaning against the wall, mobile in hand, looking not at all concerned and very faintly amused.

John didn’t want to see either of them at this moment. He had no interest in explaining anything to Mary, and if Sherlock got even one step closer, he couldn’t trust himself to keep his hands off his throat. 

And from his throat, straying to his shoulders, his face, the back of his skull. To his arms, and legs - to all those broken places. 

He tried to regulate his breathing, feeling himself on the verge of hyperventilating.

“John - I can explain.”

Sherlock, three feet away - _too close_ \- had his hands up (in surrender? supplication?) and was ignoring his bloody nose.

“No.” John shook his head. 

_That voice. Jesus...that voice._

“But I can.” Sherlock kept his hands up, but stepped closer.

“No!” 

“Should I grab a cab, John?” Mary’s voice was calm. She gave him a small smile. He thought she wanted to roll her eyes.

He shook his head, winced as the movement made it throb even more. 

“John - be reasonable.” Sherlock’s hand closed around his wrist and it was the very, very _best_ thing Sherlock could have done and the very worst. John jerked away, but Sherlock held on, and John closed his own hand over Sherlock’s wrist to push him away.

Pulse throbbed beneath warm flesh, proof of a beating heart, resurrected from stone.

John froze, seized with the fatal desire to press his lips against that wrist.

Something was unloose within him. Something that had slumbered before, locked away, unaware, had awoken now with a scream of pain, a roar of desire, a flare of need.

_No._

He jerked away from Sherlock, successfully this time. He looked warily over at Mary, who raised an eyebrow, then chanced a glance at Sherlock.

Sherlock - Sherlock looked wounded.

He lived with Mary. He’d lived with her for four months. He had a diamond ring in his pocket, sized to fit her finger. There was a John-sized depression on the left side of her bed, his toothbrush waited in her bathroom, and his dressing gown hung atop hers on the hook on the back of her bathroom door. He had two drawers in her dresser and his own clothes cupboard. The charger for his mobile was plugged in beside the bed and his post was delivered to her address. 

But his heart - oh God oh God - his heart yearned for home.

“I need - I need space.” 

Mary’s mouth quirked. She tucked her mobile in her pocket and adjusted the strap of her handbag on her shoulder.

“John - let me explain. _Please._ ” 

Jesus he looked like shit. John’s gaze moved from the swollen lump on the side of Sherlock’s face to his own hand, his fist, deflated now from the rage that had overtaken him when Sherlock bloody fucking Holmes had walked in from the dead, interrupting his marriage proposal.

“No.” He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders. “No. No explanations. Not now.” He allowed his gaze to move up Sherlock’s body, noting how thin Sherlock was, taking in his longer, less tamed hair. Sherlock - undeniably Sherlock - but different enough to make John wary.

Breathing. Moving. Heart beating. Pulse racing.

“I’m sure John just needs some time, Sherlock.” Mary had taken out a pile of tissues and was mopping blood from Sherlock’s face while he stood, not protesting, still staring at John. “You are supposed to be dead, after all. Though I suppose this will cut down on the time he spends at the cemetery.”

“I don’t need time. Don’t tell me what I need.” John fumbled in his own pocket and located a handkerchief.

“Don’t tell him what he needs,” repeated Sherlock, still, surprisingly, letting Mary mop up his face. “He doesn’t like that.”

Why that set him off, John didn’t know. All he knew was that a heartbeat later, he had launched himself at Sherlock, and they’d fallen together again to the ground, rolling on the pavement until John had Sherlock pinned. 

Sherlock immediately stopped struggling as John grabbed him by the chin.

“Don’t tell me what I need,” John spat. “If you knew what I needed, you’d have been here these past two years and I’d have been talking to you instead of to a bloody chunk of granite.”

He held Sherlock’s face, his knees pinning Sherlock’s arms to the ground. His fingers pressed into his skin, and he jerked his head roughly to the side, staring at the welt and bruising on Sherlock’s face, then letting go and getting quickly to his feet.

“You should ice that,” he said. He turned to Mary. “I need to go see someone. I’ll be back later tonight.”

Her eyes held his a long moment, then strayed over to Sherlock, and back again to John.

“I’ll keep the light on then,” she said. She walked over to Sherlock, held out her hand, and helped him to his feet, then kissed John, a lingering press of lips on his cheek. Her perfume clung to him, and she whispered _I love you, John_ into his ear, then raised her hand to hail a cab, which slid in beside her as if Sherlock Holmes himself had used his magic to call it over.

She raised two fingers in a wave as the cab turned back out into the traffic.

“John - ”

But John had turned and was walking away. 

“He won’t tell you anything.”

Sherlock called out the words. John kept moving.

“I’m back at 221B.”

John faltered - a moment’s lapse - then quickened his pace.

“Ice, Sherlock,” he called out, over his shoulder.

He walked two blocks before he hailed a cab, then slid in and gave the cabbie Mycroft Holmes’ address.

_He won’t tell you anything._

I’m back at 221B.

The hint of Mary’s perfume lingered, out of place in his current frame of mind. 

He closed his eyes, willing her image to fill his thoughts. The scent of her perfume, the fragrance of her soap, the feel of her body, warm and snug against his own. Her smile, first thing in the morning. Her lips, her tongue, her breasts, her hands carding through his hair as he rested his head on her belly while she read.

And he almost succeeded. He nearly got there. And he would have, save for Sherlock’s voice, echoing in the air, in his head, reverberating in his very heart.

 _221B_.

And suddenly it was the feel of Sherlock pinned beneath him, the roughness of his jaw, the rise and fall of his chest, the pulse of his heartbeat beneath his fingers. It was his breath, his blood, his voice, his hard and angular body.

It displaced her, so easily, so effortlessly, and he fought to bring her back.

He was so sure - so very, very sure - that she was what he wanted, needed. To move on. To reclaim his life. To love again -

To live again.

The cab stopped in front of a gated complex. He paid the driver, got out, rang the buzzer.

A moment later, the electronic gate swung soundlessly open.

_He won’t tell you anything._

He steeled himself, resolute, determined, and stepped through the gate.


	7. Deserving

Mycroft Holmes opened the door of his townhouse while John’s hand was still raised to knock on it.

“I would have sent a car,” he said, stepping back and gesturing toward a formal sitting room that gleamed of polished wood and beveled glass.

“I’ll use it to get home,” John said, voice curt. He stood in the middle of the sitting room as Mycroft walked to the sideboard and poured two glasses of scotch from a bottle that probably cost half again as much as the ring in John’s pocket. He pressed a glass into John’s hands, then sat in a leather armchair, carefully pulling at the knees of his trousers before crossing his legs. He sat there, staring at John and sipping his scotch, and occasionally checking his watch or mobile as if John was just another piece of expensive furniture in the room.

“He said you wouldn’t tell me anything,” John challenged at last, giving in to the waiting game.

“He isn’t wrong - though it would be more accurate to say that I won’t tell you what you want to know.”

“What do I want to know, then?” John swirled the liquid in his glass, then downed half of it under Mycroft’s disapproving stare. 

“How he did it. _Why_ he did it.”

John glared. His disdain for Mycroft had mellowed over these past two years, with the cemetery game and his awkward attempt at comfort there, but it was back with reinforcements now.

“Did he tell you I was coming here?” John asked.

Mycroft sighed. “No. But I’m hardly surprised to see you.”

“Where was he? Where’s he been all this time?” John demanded.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why _now_?” he countered.

“I assure you that your personal life taking such a _special_ turn at this moment is mere coincidence. Sherlock has not - had not been in a _position_ to follow your _affairs_.”

_Coincidence._

John turned away quickly, clutching his hand into a tight fist. He wanted to punch someone, and as Sherlock wasn’t around for the job, Mycroft seemed an acceptable substitute. 

Mycroft’s voice, when he spoke again, was lower. John would have called it kind had he not known Mycroft as well as he did.

“John, why are you here? You know those are his questions to answer, not mine.”

John turned around and found the courage to ask the one question Mycroft _could_ answer.

“Why did you let me fall in love with Mary? You _knew_. You knew how I feel - how I _felt_ \- about him.”

It was a mistake. A tactical error. John knew it the moment the words left his mouth. Ammunition for Mycroft. Tacit permission to meddle in his life. Acknowledgement that Mycroft knew where he stood with Mary Morstan.

Mycroft - Mycroft Holmes - actually looked away. He didn’t deny that he had known Sherlock was alive.

Only briefly. He recovered, the veiled disdain back in his voice when he answered.

“My brother is incapable of returning those feelings.”

“That’s not true.” _Feelings_ , John thought. Incapable, perhaps, of anything else, anything beyond that. But Sherlock did have feelings. Emotions. _Sentiment._

“My brother spent two years pretending to be dead while you visited the cemetery and conversed with his tombstone. I hardly think him deserving of your affections.”

John bristled. “You don’t get to decide who deserves _my_ affections. _I_ decide.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Thus _you_ decided to fall in love with Mary Morstan, yet you think I should have intervened? Prevented you from asking her out the first time? Going home with her on your second date?”

"You’re a bastard.” Despite the words, there was no real venom in John’s voice, just tired resignation.

“It’s my job.”

“You’re damn good at it.”

“Thank you.”

John leaned forward, not above pleading. “A hint. _Something_ , Mycroft. _Anything_. But no - you let me mourn. You let me grieve. You fucking paid for my _therapy._ ”

“Actually, that came from Sherlock’s account. I thought it only fair that he pay to clean up the train wreck he caused.”

“I’m not a train wreck.” John looked at his hands. “And you’re an arse.”

“No - you’re a man who’s gone on with his life and discovered love. You have a good job, good friends, and a fiancé - you _do_ have a fiancé, don’t you?”

John frowned. “Well - no. Not officially. Your brother crashed the party before we actually got to that part.”

“Splendid. You can go propose to my brother instead. I’m sure he’ll be utterly delighted as he returned fully expecting you to move back to 221B and continue your little adventures together. You’ll probably have to do a little explaining, of course - Tab A and Slot B and all that. How you’ve struggled to understand the deep waters of affection and sentimentality and - dare I say it? - _love_ while he took a two-year hiatus and can’t understand why his sidekick is _looking_ at him like that?”

When Greg Lestrade walked into the room three minutes later, he was too late to prevent John from bloodying Mycroft’s nose and just in time to haul John out to his car to take him to the A&E for stitches. 

“I expected you thirty minutes ago,” Mycroft complained, accepting the ice pack Lestrade handed him and tipping his head back as he positioned it over his nose. “You were supposed to be here _before_ he arrived. You do recall me saying he’d need a friend?”

“Yeah - I had a little visit to make first,” Lestrade disappeared back into the kitchen, reappearing a couple minutes later with a pristine white dish towel.

“Don’t use….”

“Quiet. I’m using this. You didn’t have to set him off - you should have known how volatile he’d be.”

“That is precisely why you were supposed to be here,” Mycroft said blandly.

“If you knew about this - ” John let his gaze move between Mycroft and Lestrade, settling, at last, on Lestrade. He couldn’t take another betrayal on top of the first.

“Shut up.” Lestrade held the cloth to the gash on John’s head, pressing harder than strictly necessary. “You _know_ I didn’t know, you imbecile. Mycroft called me a couple hours ago and told me. At least I was spared the shock treatment you apparently got.” He pulled the towel off, frowned at it, then turned it over and pressed it back to John’s head. “I’m late because I made a short stop at 221B.” He chuckled. “I hugged the bastard. Surprised the hell out of both of us. Though I might have followed up by breaking his nose if you hadn’t already done the job.”

“It’s not broken,” John grunted. 

“Good as,” Lestrade muttered. He sighed. “You’re going to need stitches.” 

“Hey - who’s the doctor here?”

“You don’t think I know when someone needs stitches?” challenged Lestrade. 

“Right.” John winced as Lestrade mopped blood from his hair. “But I can…”

“And you’re not going to do them yourself - not on the back of your head. Let me make up another ice pack before we go. You alright over there, Mycroft? Care to come along to get John sorted?”

“No.” 

“Fine. Suit yourself. And you deserve it, you git. Two years. Two bloody years. I’m surprised John didn’t break your legs. Why didn’t you break his legs, John?”

“Because he hit me on the back of the head with a lamp,” John said. “Which is probably considered assault and battery.” 

“Don’t push it,” warned Lestrade. “Or I’ll lock all three of you up.”

“Are you planning on letting Mary know what’s going on?” Lestrade asked John as he pulled out of Mycroft’s private parking garage. Which was more than odd – but John pushed it aside.

“Yeah. She’ll be wondering where I am.”

Fuck. What was he going to do about Mary? Suddenly, the best thing to happen in his life since Sherlock, the woman he’d planned to propose to tonight, seemed more an inconvenience than a permanent fixture. He needed to get his head together, sort this out, get over the shock of suddenly seeing Sherlock again. 

He’d spent more than a year sorting out his feelings for Sherlock. He’d come to grips with the loss, and why it had so completely gutted him. He’d discovered things about himself that he hadn’t known before - about how he loved, and who, and why. Self-examination. Emotional reckoning. A come to Jesus moment like you have when you stand up in an AA meeting and get up the courage to say it aloud.

_Hi - I’m John Watson and I loved Sherlock Holmes._

Loved.

Falling in love with Mary had been, in comparison, a non-event.

She’d caught his eye that first day she’d joined the team at the clinic. She was smart, and professional, and sarcastic as they came. They’d eaten lunch together in the break room, and she’d not bothered pretending she didn’t know exactly who he was. But she made him laugh, and by the end of the week he’d asked her to dinner and from there - well.

Mycroft had it right.

He’d been sure. So very sure. They slotted together so well. He _liked_ her. He genuinely liked her.

And, so slowly he didn’t notice it was happening, like turned into something more - something deeper, more intimate. They were comfortable together, in a relaxed, quiet way.

And the sex - well, no complaints there. Sex with Mary was as comfortable and familiar as dinner out or staying in and watching television together. It came to them almost organically, without having to think about it at all.

It was everything life with Sherlock wasn’t and he loved it. 

He _loved_ it.

He loved it…. Mary. He loved _Mary_.

Besides - what if Mycroft was right about Sherlock? What if Sherlock’s mindset hadn’t shifted at all when it came to John Watson? 

Was John capable of going back to how things were? Before Sherlock died? Before Mary?

“What was that all about?” John asked as Lestrade turned left, displaying an easy familiarity with the route.

“What?” 

“You - why did Mycroft call you?” John asked. “You seemed almost - I don’t know - chummy.”

“Chummy?” Lestrade said with a bark of laughter. “I can think of a thousand words to describe Mycroft Holmes and how he gets on with people, and chummy certainly isn’t one of them.”

“Point.” John was quiet for a few minutes, closing his eyes as Lestrade sped through London. “So why’d he call you? You - in particular.”

“He knew you’d need a friend,” Lestrade said. 

“He knew I’d try to level him,” John countered. “He wanted protection.”

Lestrade grinned. “That too.”

John glanced at Lestrade, watching him as he drove expertly through the traffic. It hadn’t escaped his notice - not entirely - that Lestrade had seemed familiar with the layout of Mycroft’s place. That he’d been comfortable there. That there’d been a rapport between the two - though Lestrade hadn’t seemed too concerned about finding Mycroft with a bloody nose.

“Are you going to tell me how you got into Mycroft’s townhouse? Into his private parking garage? I don’t recall either one of us opening the door.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.” Lestrade was manuevering the car into the hospital’s car park. “I did some casework for him. We have a drink together now and then. Have you called Mary?”

Shit.

John stared at his mobile, then typed out a quick text.

\- _Commiserating with Lestrade. Home in a couple hours. Will explain all then._ -

He really didn’t want to try to explain exactly why he was at the A&E over the phone, or in a text. He’d like not to have to explain at all, but it would be more than a bit hard to hide a shaved spot on the back of his head and a row of sutures.

“You’re still seeing that therapist?” Lestrade said, too casually, as they made their way into the hospital. 

“Is that a question or a suggestion?” 

“I’m your friend, John. I’m concerned.”

“A friend who’s having an occasional drink with Mycroft Holmes.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “I have an occasional drink with you, too. More than just an occasional drink, in fact.”

But John’s attention was no longer on Lestrade or the question of Mycroft Holmes.

“Mary?”

“Lovely to see you too, John. Hello, Greg.” Mary Morstan looked up from her chair in the waiting room and smiled.

“How - why are you here?” John managed.

She waved her mobile. “Text message from someone who signs his texts SH. Helpful - seeing as his phone number wasn’t in my contacts.”

“What? Is he here too?”

Mary’s mouth quirked. She didn’t look angry at all. She looked, in fact, like she was quite enjoying herself. 

“Hardly, John. I think the paperwork would be a bit of a stumbling block, seeing as he’s dead.”

And John, pushing back the reflex to go to 221B and check on Sherlock to make sure he didn’t need medical attention, sank down into an uncomfortable chair next to Mary and let her lift the ice pack and check the gash while Lestrade went to the desk.

He wanted to see Dr. Wohlberg. Now. Would be a hundred kinds of giddy if she walked into the waiting this second and called his name.

The only thing better than that would be to stand in a darkened room, eyes closed, bow in hand, violin tucked under his chin.

A violin that was, at that precise moment, being sorely missed by the current occupant of 221B.


	8. Just Another Bedsit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some John/Mary sex/intimacy in this chap. Sorry folks...plot and all that.

Chapter 8

The texts started twenty-four hours after Sherlock rose from the dead.

John, watching the telly while Mary read in the bedroom, deliberately separating herself from John’s little black rain cloud mood, jumped when his mobile vibrated. How he knew it was Sherlock he couldn’t say. Truth be told, he’d been expecting this all day, waiting for it.

Wanting it.

It was all he could think about - _he_ was all he could think about. Those questions that Mycroft wouldn’t touch were still spinning around in his head, and in the short space of a day, he’d tipped a hundred times from hating Sherlock to loving him to wishing he’d never come back to ….

No. Wishing he’d come back sooner. Before he’d moved through the grief. Before he’d moved on.

And he hated him for it. The rage was a powerful thing, working diligently against the secret, blessed relief. The relief, the joy, bled from his heart. But the rage constricted it, the blinding anger, the cruel betrayal.

Mary was letting him be. God she was perfect. She didn’t try to make him talk, spill his guts. She made him tea. Curled up beside him in bed the way she did every night, snuggling against his midsection and falling asleep.

“Wake me if you need me,” she’d said.

And two hours into that restless night, when there were far too few distractions to keep him from losing all perspective as he alternatively soared and plummeted, he’d needed her. Needed something to ground himself, to anchor his restless soul, his wounded heart.

He’d kissed the back of her neck, her smooth shoulder, cupped her breast and brushed across a nipple through the fabric of her gown. She’d sighed and arched against him, and he’d continued, and it was everything he needed at the moment. He loved her like this, when she moved from tired and languid to needy, breathless. He made love to her slowly at first, but as he moved - as _they_ moved - and his thoughts centered, this thing, this joining, became the focal point of his world and he pushed into it, more feral than he’d ever been with her. Need mounted, and she surprised him with the ferocity of her response, managing, with some effort, to manuever him onto his back so she could ride him.

“Look at me - look at _me_ ,” she’d demanded.

If Sherlock was there at that moment, he was cowering in a shadowy corner of John’s mind, an unwilling voyeur to the maelstrom his return had caused.

But now, with the night gone and daylight and the telly and the newspaper and an open beer distracting him from Sherlock, his mobile had vibrated. 

Other people texted him. Harry. Mike. Lestrade. Old friends. People from work. 

It could be anyone.

It could have been anyone, but it was Sherlock.

_-Dinner? - SH_

John stared at the message, idly wondering if Sherlock actually took time out to eat these days.

He wasn’t about to go to dinner with Sherlock. He couldn’t trust himself - he’d be too angry, or not angry enough. He might kill him - or worse yet, kiss him. 

He keyed in a reply, but his finger hovered over send, and he backspaced, and tried again. He frowned, deleted the message, and pondered.

_No._

_No thanks._

_Ha!_

Yeah - short and sarcastic. The kind of one-word reply that delivered the message but let Sherlock know that he’s feeling this … this hurt.

No.

_Sure. How about our place? You and Mary need to get to know each other._

Get to know each other. They were already texting.

Wait.

How had Sherlock _texted_ Mary? Why did he have her mobile number? An odd feeling settled on him, landing right in the core of his stomach. Some detective he was, totally missing the real significance of that whole episode.

_I have questions._

He settled on those three words at last, then made himself wait an agonizing hour before he sent the message. Mary came out to make tea, and they drank it together, sitting in their usual places. 

Sometimes he wished he still had his gun so he could put a bullet through the wall.

“You should stay away from him for a few days, you know,” Mary said.

John looked over the paper he wasn’t really reading. “Only a few?” he replied with a small smile.

She grinned and blew over her tea. “A few dozen?” 

“You’re laughing.” He studied her, trying to understand. Normal people did not laugh in situations like this - not that normal people _had_ situations like this.

“Yeah, I am.” She grinned at him again. “I like him.”

“You _like_ him?”

“I liked seeing you like that - angry. Passionate.

“Passionate,” he repeated. She had his undivided attention now, the mobile on the side table all but forgotten.

She smiled, holding the cup with both hands as she sat comfortably cross-legged on her chair. “The sex was good. Really good.”

“You liked it.” 

It was half statement, half question. Of _course_ she had liked it. She’d thrown herself into the power play, had seemingly read his mind and herded Sherlock into a holding cell of sorts while she showed John - reminded him - what he _had,_ what he _needed._

What he had with her. What he’d never had with Sherlock.

“You know I liked it.” She raised an eyebrow and he met her gaze with a smile of his own. 

A week ago - hell, a _day_ ago - he’d have jumped at the clear invitation and followed her back to the bedroom for another go ‘round, arms looped over her shoulders, nuzzling her neck as they walked. A small slip of his mind thought that yes - maybe he should - for the distraction, to keep his attention off his mobile and the text waiting to go out.

He waited - hesitated - too long. 

Mary stood. “I’m off to meet Janine, then. Shopping - girl stuff. Alright with you?”

“Sure.” He made himself focus on her. She really _was_ good for him, wasn’t she? She wasn’t grilling him about Sherlock, or hovering, or making him talk about it. She was clearly giving him space to work it out. She knew him. His mind. The way he had to work through things on his own. She’d not even fussed over him much when they’d been at the A &E, had taken the blood-soaked towel from him and fetched him another from the desk without a single exclamation about the quantity of blood.

She’d known exactly what he’d needed the night before, hadn’t she?

“Maybe we can try again tomorrow night?” he said, wondering why the words were so difficult to voice.

“Try again?” she laughed. She walked over and rested her bum on the arm of his chair and fondled his hair, avoiding the sutures. “Last night wasn’t good enough, then?”

She was so close. She smelled fresh, bed-rumpled, like a comforting cup of tea. When she was this close, when he could lean his head against her chest, feel the thrum of her heartbeat, it was so much easier to keep Sherlock’s ghost entombed. 

“I meant dinner - since ours got interrupted last night.”

He watched as her face softened into a smile, and she kissed him - a real, proper kiss, her hand on his cheek, brushing back his hair. When she pulled away, she smoothed over his mustache with one finger.

“You really should shave this. Makes you look old.”

“Good,” he said. He teased her by rubbing it against her cheek. “It’s an experiment to see if I get more respect.”

“I don’t think Sherlock liked it,” she said as she stood.

John immediately bristled. “Good. I’ll keep it then.”

She looked at him as she picked up her keys. “It’s your face,” she said. “Just don’t complain if Janine and I decide to get tattoos while we’re out. Wild hair and all.”

He grinned as she went back to their room to get ready to go out, and picked up the newspaper again and pretended to read until she left the apartment thirty minutes later.

He made himself wait an entire minute before he picked up the phone and touched send.

_I have questions._

He didn’t expect Sherlock would play the same make-him-wait-for-it game, and as anticipated, his mobile vibrated moments later.

_Discuss over dinner tonight? - SH_

He didn’t think too long over his response.

_No._

He hoped it sounded curt. He hoped Sherlock didn’t just assume he was somewhere where he shouldn’t be texting, or engrossed in a football game. He had considered _No thanks_. There was a world of subtle difference between the two responses but he didn’t think Sherlock would even notice.

_Coffee? - SH_

John stared at the phone. Sherlock had waited a full three minutes to respond. That was - unusual. And his response almost made John believe he’d actually considered it. Tried to interpret John’s response.

_Not yet._

The phone vibrated mere seconds later.

_Tomorrow? - SH_

He wanted to be annoyed at Sherlock’s presumptuousness, but he wasn’t. He wanted to be angry that Sherlock apparently hadn’t changed after all this time, but he could only feel an odd, misplaced relief.

_Too soon. Give me time._

He hit send.

And waited.

And waited.

He got up and warmed his tea. Tried to do the crossword puzzle. Flipped through the channels on the telly. Checked his phone. Checked to make sure the last text had gone out.

What the hell was Sherlock playing at?

Finally, he could take it no longer.

_I’m off at 2 on Friday._

_I’ll wait outside clinic. - SH_

John felt that weight in his belly again. Dread and expectation. He fought to keep the anger on top, the sense of betrayal, warring as they were with the horrible yearning he’d thought he’d finally conquered.

Friday. Two o’clock.

He breathed out an expletive as he remembered something he should never have forgotten. He had a four thirty violin lesson on Friday.

He sighed. He was going to have to see about buying his own violin - though he imagined Paolo would rent him one. He’d have to start paying for lessons, too, since Paolo wouldn’t have Sherlock’s to play any longer.

He glanced at the corner beside the television where the violin was tucked away, inside its case. 

Yeah.

He played to chase away the ups and downs, to even out his emotions. But now, more than ever before, he heard Sherlock as he played, and felt him move behind him, and smelled him in the polished wood.

And it was as if Mary had never existed in the flat, and the scent of her perfume blew out the window, and it was just another bedsit, and he a lost soldier, a wounded warrior, a lover in mourning.


	9. You Always Have a Choice

Mary said no.

Or, more properly put, Mary said “Not yet.”

Or certainly would have, had she actually let him ask the question she surely knew he’d been about to ask two nights before.

Not that he’d even been able to _get_ there again.

They’d gone to a different restaurant, as John wasn’t about to show his face in the one where he had tackled Sherlock to the floor. The food was nearly as good, the atmosphere acceptable, and the prices all around more palatable. The ring was in his pocket, and he was waiting for the right time to pull it out and move this relationship to its logical end.

No - not end. _Beginning._ New beginning - progression to the next level, anyway. The trajectory was set, a bit like pre-destiny. Thank God for Mondays - he’d slid back into their comfortable daily routine, and while he couldn’t keep thoughts of Sherlock at bay, he’d allowed himself an overdose of indignation at Sherlock’s presumption. He’d made a decision about Mary weeks ago, had found the perfect ring, planned the perfect evening. A boil-over of tumultuous emotion at Sherlock’s return was expected, but didn’t change a thing because - and this, he was finding, was the most difficult thing of all to digest - there hadn’t _been_ a thing. Not between them, anyway. A fast and furious friendship based on complementary personalities, an addiction to adrenaline, a shared dislike for social niceties - though one of them excelled at playing the game and the other most decidedly did not. But none of those things spelled long-term relationship, commitment or even indicated a desire for more.

It was there. John knew it. He’d felt it, bled it, from the moment he saw Sherlock balanced on the precipice, toes to the wind, to the day - was that just a week ago? - when he’d buried his dog tags at the foot of his grave.

But had Sherlock felt it? In the long months of his absence, had he had a similar epiphany? Had he missed John? Made bargains with God and the devil alike? 

_One more miracle…._

John thought not. Sherlock’s demeanor had conveyed that he had every intention of continuing as they had begun.

_The game is on._

When, finally, John reached into his pocket for the box that held the ring, midway through dessert and with several very good glasses of wine spurring him onward, Mary reached over and took his other hand.

“John - let’s not, alright? Not now.”

He froze, hand falling out of his pocket, away from the velvet-covered box. 

She squeezed the hand she was still holding and he stared, oddly out of sorts with the reprieve she’d given him.

“I want this. Us.” He placed his other hand atop hers. “I want this for us.”

“I want this for us,” she repeated. “ _When_ you’re ready - really ready.”

“I’m ready.” John smiled. “I’ve _been_ ready,” he insisted, leaning in, speaking urgently, because suddenly it was important that it not wait. That the decision be made and written on stone and that the ring on her finger banish all thoughts of Sherlock and never-would-bes. “I want this for us,” he repeated.

“You want this.” She leaned back and tilted her head a fraction, watching him as he let autopilot govern his responses. He could see that she was thinking quite a bit more than she was saying, but he didn’t press her, afraid, at a very real level, to face those truths aloud. “Well, if you still want this in a month, we’ll do this again. There’s no need to rush into it - I’m not planning to fall in love with someone else in the next four weeks.”

And so it went.

Nothing changed. They lived together, worked together, ate together. He put the ring back in his drawer, tucked inside a pair of green socks he never wore, and tried not to think about it. 

He had Friday to get through first.

Or to get _to_.

And of course, there was the violin.

Sherlock had to know it was missing, and must know that John had it. He’d surely have gone to Mycroft for it, and Mycroft would have pointed him back to John. 

Yet, unbelievably, he hadn’t yet demanded it back.

John wondered what it would feel like to play a different violin, an _ordinary_ violin, one that hadn’t belonged to Sherlock. One that Sherlock had never touched. Would he feel the same sort of connection to the music? Would it calm him the same way? Center him? Ground him?

He’d mourned with the instrument. _Spoken_ to Sherlock. He’d lost himself in the sad and simple notes of those early days. And he’d continued to play, even when the grief had eased into sadness, and the sadness into a persistent, but bearable, ache. 

He’d have to give it back. It wasn’t his anymore, and it was ridiculous to continue to use it to mourn a man who wasn’t dead.

It was a difficult week to suffer, his emotions all over the board. Mary suffered through it with him, giving him space, making no demands, carrying on as if it were only the two of them in the room. 

Friday at last, and John watched the street outside the clinic through a gap in the blinds. Watched as Sherlock appeared ten minutes early, coat buttoned high against the November cold. He fidgeted - reached into his pockets more than once to come up empty-handed, and John realised he was after a cigarette, and resisting the urge with difficulty. He turned and stared at the building, eyes scanning the windows, then buried his hands in his pockets and paced the pavement.

Anger, shock, surprise diminished, John saw how thin he’d become, then reminded himself, as he buttoned his coat and squared his shoulders, that he wasn’t Sherlock’s keeper. 

Not anymore.

They hardly spoke as they walked together to the diner John had chosen, an out-of-the-way place he’d never been before that promised privacy and anonymity. John hated how easily he fell into step beside Sherlock. This had once felt so natural, so ordinary, walking quickly to match Sherlock’s long strides. But now, there was something off about it and he realised, as they rounded a corner and he stepped a bit closer to Sherlock to avoid a woman with a pram, that nowadays he walked hand in hand with Mary, and they took their time getting places. 

An urgency he’d not felt in two years prickled at him, the restlessness that still plagued him suddenly given an outlet as he stepped up his pace even more.

They were nearly alone in the diner, settled in uncomfortable silence in an oversized booth, Sherlock ignoring the menu and the waitress altogether in favour of staring at John, as John ordered for them both.

“You have questions,” Sherlock said, cutting into the silence that had grown longer as John sat there, staring back at Sherlock who was absolutely the same and so utterly different. 

“Yes.” John replied. “Quite a lot of them, actually,” he added, nodding his thanks at the waitress as she brought their tea ahead of the food. 

Sherlock scooted the milk across to John without comment, then waved his hand in a _go on, then_ gesture. His focus was on John, and John saw, in his posture, his gestures, that Sherlock hadn’t expected this turn, that he was off center, impatient to have things back to right. Back to how they had been.

He was humouring John, with every good intention, but he didn’t understand John’s anger.

John didn’t think he could. Not without admissions he wasn’t prepared to make.

“Alright.” John sorted through all the things he wanted to know, the gaps and holes that were keeping him awake at night and leaving him unsettled and restless during the day. There really was no logical place to start. “Why did you do it?”

Sherlock’s hands flexed around his mug and his eyes, which had been locked on John’s face, seemingly impassive, dropped to study the surface of his tea instead. There was no telltale drop of his shoulders in defeat or resignation, and when he spoke, it was as if he was relating the details of a case to one of Lestrade’s people, expecting no questions and leaving no opportunity for interruptions of any kind.

“Moriarty wanted me dead, but wanted me dead in a spectacular way. He blackmailed me by forcing me to jump to avoid consequences which were unacceptable to me, no matter if I were dead or alive. Killing myself was the only option, but as it was an unacceptable option, one that handed him a personal victory and left me unable to retaliate and take down his organisation, I had to convince him - and his web - that I had indeed done his bidding. And to do that, no one could know that I was alive until after I had taken that organisation down.”

“So you’ve taken it down?” He looked up from his cup into Sherlock’s closed face. “You killed him? Moriarty?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, puzzled. “He killed himself. Shot himself through the mouth - on the roof before I jumped.”

“ _Before_ you jumped?” _What? No one mentioned a body... _“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?”__

__“What I said - was I not clear?” Sherlock’s gaze narrowed, focusing on John._ _

__“You jumped _after_ he killed himself?” John’s voice rose and he contained it by lowering it into a protracted hiss._ _

__“You react but you don’t _see_.” Sherlock studied John, scrutinising him in a way that made John intensely uncomfortable. “This was a bad idea. I thought - ”_ _

__“What did you think? That you could waltz in here and explain a two years’ absence and a rather expensive tombstone in a lovely cemetery with _he made me do it after he was already dead_?”_ _

__“You don’t understand.”_ _

__There was a hint - the barest hint - of frustration in Sherlock’s voice. One hand continued to grip his mug while the other clenched into a fist on the table._ _

__“You’re right. I don’t understand.” John lowered his voice. “I don’t understand why you jumped off a bloody building to fake your own death when the man who wanted you dead and discredited was already dead himself.”_ _

__“Trust me,” Sherlock said, raising his eyes to John’s. “John, please - I had no choice.”_ _

__“Bullshit.” John called him on it. “You always have a choice.”_ _

__“The alternative was unthinkable,” Sherlock shot back. His fisted hand unclenched, and he drummed his fingers on the table in a clear Sherlockian sign of nervous energy._ _

__“The alternative?” John’s attention was drawn to Sherlock’s fingers, long and slender, arched as if drawing bow over strings. His scrutiny was not unnoticed by Sherlock, and the fingers stopped their drumming as John, now intent on something he had not noticed earlier, had never, in fact noticed, stared. Two fingers on his left hand, the middle finger and the ring finger beside it, were oddly bent, as if they’d been broken and poorly set. Sherlock pulled his hand back and made a fist, speaking sharply._ _

__“What else do you want to know?” he asked. “Or is it my turn for questions now?”_ _

__“Your turn? Who said you get a turn?” John countered. But he wasn’t distracted from that hand - those fingers. An image of Sherlock playing the violin rose in his mind, fingers expertly moving over the finger board. Strong fingers - whole fingers. Fingers that bent and moved as they should, as they always had. Fluid and graceful, organic, as much a part of the violin as of the hand itself._ _

__“Why did you leave 221B?” Sherlock asked, dropping his left hand into his lap. “Some of your things are still there.”_ _

__“What happened to your hand?” asked John, ignoring Sherlock’s question. “Let me see it.”_ _

__“I left enough to keep it for three years,” Sherlock said, continuing his train of thought as if he hadn’t heard John at all._ _

__“You’re really asking me that? Why _I_ left?” John exclaimed as he reached out and grabbed Sherlock’s hand. His fingers closed around the narrow wrist, tightening as Sherlock tried to pull away. _ _

__The immediate throb of pulse nearly made him release his fingers._ _

__“Don’t,” he managed, gripping even more tightly as Sherlock acquiesced and stopped tugging. “One question each, alright? You answer the next one I ask - honestly. Then I’ll answer one in turn.”_ _

__Sherlock’s pulse continued to throb beneath John’s fingers, but he didn’t relinquish his hold. He turned Sherlock’s hand over, and stared at the clenched fist._ _

__“Open your hand,” he said._ _

__“That’s not a question,” Sherlock replied, even as he slowly opened his fingers._ _

__John stared at the fingers, at how they curved awkwardly to the side. They were scarred, both of them, and the pinky as well, the knuckles slightly flattened._ _

__“Tell me what happened,” John said, carefully manipulating the middle finger, feeling the bone, the joints._ _

__“Also not a question.”_ _

__John looked up to find Sherlock staring at him._ _

__“What happened?” John asked. “All of it.”_ _

__“If you’d asked where I’ve been for two years - and you didn’t - you’d know that I spent time in a variety of unsavory locations uncovering and dismantling the web Moriarty left behind. As such, I did not have ready access to medical care and some injuries were left untreated or patched up only with what I had on hand. This is one of those. It’s fine. I have good range of motion. You needn’t worry about it.”_ _

__“When did…?”_ _

__“That’s a second question,” Sherlock interrupted. “And I haven’t had mine yet.”_ _

__“You’ve also not told me what happened to your hand,” John snapped._ _

__“If I tell you, will you do something for me instead of answering a question?”_ _

__“God, Sherlock!” John released Sherlock’s hand and blew out a frustrated breath, but when he caught Sherlock’s eye, there was a gleam there he’d not consciously known he’d missed. He worked to keep his frustration alive. “You can’t just change the rules. I’ll answer a question - but if you don’t tell me what happened to your hand, I can’t promise you a better answer than you gave me.”_ _

__“I was trampled by a horse.”_ _

__“You were trampled by a horse and this was the worse thing you got from that?”_ _

__“I didn’t say that.”_ _

__John froze. He closed his mouth, then pressed his eyes closed for a long moment. He didn’t know what to believe, and didn’t know if he could bear the truth._ _

__“Give me your hand now.”_ _

__Sherlock’s voice was soft, but firm, and he held his right hand out until John, puzzled, extended his own right hand._ _

__“Your left hand.”_ _

__John realized his mistake as soon as Sherlock took his hand and ran his fingers over the callouses on John’s fingertips. He raised his eyes, focusing on the spot on John’s neck where the violin touched it as he played, the spot that was always just a bit irritated. He had a puzzled look on his face, almost whimsical, as if he couldn’t quite fathom why two plus two no longer added up to four._ _

__John waited – caught out – knowing that Sherlock, evidence of John’s violin playing observed, deduced and neatly filed, was no longer quite so likely to ask why he’d left 221B. But Sherlock dropped John’s hand, glancing at his own hand with its damaged fingers. Something changed in his expression, and he let out his breath slowly, then schooled his features neatly, and looked up at John with a bland smile._ _

__“You left your gun at 221B,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’d like to negotiate a trade.”_ _

___TBC_ _ _


	10. Gun, Violin, Mustache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is put through the emotional wringer in the space of an hour spent alone with Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock - well, Sherlock is a bit clueless.

John was torn between denying he wanted the gun and denying he’d taken the violin, neither of which was in any way true. He could play the game with Sherlock and buy time, but he knew Sherlock well enough to know that he’d never believe either claim.

And to be honest, he’d never thought he’d see the gun again. He’d left 221B without it, deliberately, and had never needed it or wanted it enough to ask Mycroft for it, or Mrs. Hudson, or to go back looking for it.

In the two years since he’d left the flat, he’d not been within a block of Baker Street, even though it meant he’d turned his back - quite literally - on Mrs. Hudson.

Not that he hadn’t itched for that gun. Dreamt of the pistol’s fit, its weight in his hand, or tucked in his waistband, cold against the small of his back. But he’d learned to do without it, and without the sense of security it brought him, the peace of mind, the control. There were much bigger holes in his life, much more substantial absences.

He’d no one to use it for, after all. He’d stopped stepping between Sherlock and danger the day Sherlock dropped out of his life.

But now, with Sherlock back, no matter that his post-Sherlock life, for all practical purposes anyway, was no different than it had been the day he purchased the ring, he missed that Sig. He’d sat on Sherlock’s bed two days after the funeral, the remnants of his half-lived life already lugged down the stairs into the foyer, and had held the gun for a very long time.

Anyone coming upon him at that moment might have thought him contemplating something much darker than whether to leave the gun, or take it with him.

It didn’t feel right taking it, nor did it feel right being without it. Ultimately, he’d resolutely shoved it under the mattress, but when he was about to close the door on 221B forever, he’d not been able to deny himself one last visual sweep of the flat, one last memory of home. And his gaze had fallen on the violin, propped against the wall by the window, an extension of Sherlock Holmes, dismembered and at rest.

No one had dared to touch it, not with John still in the flat.

He’d padded over, aware of the creak of the floorboards as he’d never been before, then crouched down, touched it cautiously, perhaps half-expecting it to let loose out a mournful note, then lifted it reverently.

He could see himself now, in the dusty room, sunlight streaking the cool darkness, lifting the violin, mimicking the remembered stance, resting his chin where Sherlock’s had so often lain. A Victorian postcard image from a hazy, gas-lit, long-forgotten day.

When he closed the door behind him at last, the skull remained on the mantel, his gun shoved beneath the mattress of Sherlock’s bed. He left his razor in the shower, a pair of boots in the back of his closet, and his passport, forgotten, tucked inside an old Anatomy textbook. 

But when he climbed inside the cab, his worldly possessions stowed easily inside the boot, he held the violin carefully on his lap, and didn’t miss his passport for more than a year.

“John?”

John blinked back the memories, lifting his face to stare across the table at Sherlock.

“I mentioned a trade.”

“You asked if I’d like to _negotiate_ a trade,” John corrected. He leaned back in the booth, knowing now what he wanted, what he’d ask.

“Ah.” Sherlock’s mouth quirked with interest. “I was going to propose an even trade.”

“What’s the fun of that?” John retorted. He cleared his throat. “Actually….”

“I thought you had questions.

“Damnit, Sherlock! Focus - one topic.”

The quirk again, the feigned look of innocence. “What?”

John stood up, irritated. Despite the initial attraction of the _idea_ of having his old weapon back, he didn’t want it enough to keep playing these games, especially when he already had a leg up on Sherlock. _He_ had the violin.

“John - please. I’ll behave, really. I’m - trying. This isn’t easy. I didn’t expect that you’d have - ”

“What? Gone on with my life? You thought I’d be at 221B writing your biography? Solving crimes on my own? Waiting for Lestrade to _text_ me?” John dropped back onto the bench and clenched his fists.

He stopped, trying to get hold of himself again. He was so volatile - anything could set him off of late. Like his best friend, the man he’d watch fall from the roof of St. Bart’s hospital, resurrecting himself like some biblical Lazarus.

“Actually, I didn’t expect you’d have taken my violin and learned to play it. I didn’t expect you’d have left your gun under my mattress. And I certainly didn’t expect -” 

Sherlock stopped speaking, mid-thought. He looked away.

“Never mind,” he said. “Why don’t we save your questions for another day - or perhaps another medium. You can text them, or e-mail, and I can give them proper thought before responding.”

“What were you about to say?” John persisted, doggedly. The afternoon was already a loss. He still had only a vague idea of why Sherlock had faked his death, and no idea at all of where he’d been. Not somewhere nice, by the general look of things, and definitely not with nice people. “What else didn’t you expect?”

“Molly helped me.”

“Molly helped you.” Surprise, surprise. 

Sherlock nodded, falsely contrite.

“You mean she knew - she helped you fake your death. She - what? Provided a stand-in body? Some authentic blood to toss all over you? Let you stay at her place until after the funeral? Helped with your disguise? Dyed your hair? Let you trampouline into her office window?”

“John - really….”

“Don’t interrupt!” he hissed.

Sherlock opened his mouth then, apparently thinking better of answering, closed it again. 

“Say it.” John’s voice was as level, and as forceful, as he could make it. This was insane. Maddening. They couldn’t stay on subject for any time at all and he couldn’t trust himself, either, couldn’t prioritize his emotions, his reactions, definitely couldn’t control what came out of his mouth.

And yet - yet - this was so fucking _Sherlock_. This was any day - every day - of his life two years ago. This was never knowing what was coming around the corner next, who would knock on the door, what Sherlock would pull out of the pocket of his Belstaff, what he’d find in the refrigerator when he went looking for milk for his cereal. This was agonizingly frustrating and comfortingly familiar.

He hated it.

“I didn’t expect she’d keep the secret. I thought she’d have told you.”

John stared at Sherlock until Sherlock looked away. This time, John forced himself to think it through, and only spoke when he had a tenuous control of his anger.

“You knew she wouldn’t tell me or you wouldn’t have asked her to help. You’d have convinced her that telling me would compromise your life or something. So what else didn’t you expect?” He was tempted to let it go, but Sherlock was uncomfortable. He’d nearly said something that he _knew_ would set John off.

Oh.

“Mary.” The name dropped heavily from his lips. “You didn’t expect me to have found someone.” 

_Someone else._

“No. John - no. That’s not it. That’s not at all what - ”

“It really was straightforward, Sherlock. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was to to _keep_ a girlfriend with you dead!”

“I’m sure it was. And while I admit I wasn’t expecting the level of commitment you have attained with Ms. Morstan, I would have to make that a fourth item on my list.”

“Fine.” John glared and swallowed a gulp of tepid tea. “What’s number three, then.”

Sherlock pressed his mouth closed and fiddled with his mug. Finally, he looked up at John then pointed at his own lip.

“That.”

“My mustache.”

Sherlock sighed. “Yes. _That._ ”

Oh, this was rich. John stared at Sherlock, unblinking.

“The violin. The gun. My mustache.”

“John - you have to admit that ridiculous sprout of facial hair is just as much out of character as you abandoning your gun or learning to play an instrument as delicate as the violin.”

John had been about to defend his mustache, but the statement about the violin and his ability to play it rankled him, and brought him back to Sherlock’s proposed negotiations. 

“I’m not going to keep the violin from you, and may as well take back the gun, now that you’re alive and I’m more likely to need it again,” he said, keeping his voice low. It wouldn’t do to have anyone overhear a conversation about an illegal firearm, especially one implying that he might use the gun to kill the person across from him. 

John didn’t miss the look that crossed Sherlock’s face - not at the implied, but empty, threat - Sherlock probably took it that John would use the gun to protect them, not to off him - but at the promise of the violin coming back to 221B. 

“Thank you,” Sherlock murmured, looking at John in a way that indicated he knew John wasn’t quite finished with this conversation. “221B isn’t the same. It will help to fill the empty spaces.”

There was something half wistful, half plaintive in his voice, and John, who had so often seen grey where Sherlock saw black and white, very nearly felt sorry for Sherlock, who’d come back from the dead to find a dusty flat filled with shadows and memories. The same shadows, the same memories, one could argue, that John had fled all those long months ago.

“I know a man who can help you,” Sherlock said as the silence grew between them, as John kicked the undeserved sympathy back into a convenient mental cupboard.

John blinked, letting his focus center on these incongruous words from Sherlock Holmes.

“Don’t worry about the cost - he owes me a favour or two, and I’ll cover anything extra. You’ll want something comparable - a beginner’s instrument won’t do at this point, but you needn’t invest in something which produces nuances you can’t discern, much less appreciate. You can work up, of course - children often do, in instrument size and quality, as they improve in technique and commit to the instrument and accept it as a vocation. You’ve hardly got the distractions a younger man might have, which will work in your favour. And as a man committed to routine, you’ve already worked daily practice into your schedule.” 

He paused, perhaps stopping for breath, but he met John’s eye as he opened his mouth to speak again.

“What?”

John was biting his bottom lip, and he released it and forced himself to take a deep breath. He was about to do something exceedingly stupid, but he had a point to prove now, and he’d already decided on this course of action before he even opened his mouth.

“You haven’t asked Mycroft about your violin?”

“Of course I asked Mycroft. I assumed he’d taken it for safe-keeping and locked it away in a climate-controlled vault. He told me to take it up with you as you’d taken it as a sentimental relic of our brief time together.” Sherlock frowned. “His words, mind you. I’d asked Mrs. Hudson first, of course - and no, I didn’t intend to make her cry. And speaking of that - she’s not too happy with you, John, and thinks you should come around for tea. She had every intention of slapping you for your neglect until I reappeared, and now she simply wants to extend her sympathy and plot her revenge.”

John was chewing his bottom lip again - sometimes it was the only way he could keep from banging his head on the table.

“Don’t do that. It makes you look ridiculous - what with your top lip virtually invisible under that mouldy carpet, your bottom lip sticks out like a weak spot in a sheep’s bladder.”

“Shut up. Just - stop talking.” 

How could he want to kill Sherlock and at the same time, want to throw himself at the man’s feet and kiss the ground in thanksgiving that he was back? Back in all his frustrating, ridiculous, incomprehensible glory?

“I have a lesson. A violin lesson. In one hour. I left your violin there on Wednesday so it could be restrung and checked out. At the time, I intended to return it to you this weekend. You, Sherlock Holmes, are going to come to this lesson and meet _my_ man, who will recommend a suitable replacement instrument for me and who will either reinforce your deductions about my playing or throw them back in your self-satisfied face.”

John finished with a glare, and Sherlock closed his mouth, which had been open, waiting for a chance to get a word - any word - in.

“Alright then?”

“Fine.”

John glared some more, for good measure, but no matter how much he willed the frustration, the hurt, the anger to spill out and take over, his heart of heart simply wasn’t in it when Sherlock - living, breathing, saying stupid, pompous things - was sitting across the table from him in a warm restaurant with tortured, poorly-healed fingers and ideas about John that were two years and a hundred lifetimes old.

Sherlock, who couldn’t read emotions but knew all forty-three muscles in John’s face and every possible way they could combine, allowed himself a retort.

“You’ll like my man better.”

“No,” John answered, knowing he had this one. “No, I absolutely won’t.”


	11. Missing Pieces

In all the time John had been learning to play the violin under Paolo’s tutelage, he’d never once considered that Paolo didn’t teach other beginners. Thinking about it now, standing in front of the familiar shop with Sherlock at his side, he realised that Sherlock was right - Paolo _didn’t_ work with beginners. Not with other beginners, anyway. Not once in the many times he’d studied the instruments for sale while waiting for Paolo to call him back had he heard even a note that sounded off, like the student didn’t know her way around the instrument. No, the music in this shop was professional, brilliantly executed, beautifully played. John always felt a sorry excuse for a student after hearing those who went before or after him.

Still, he’d told himself, everyone started at the bottom. Everyone was a beginner once. There had been a day - long ago as it likely was - when even Sherlock had been new to the violin.

The very same Sherlock had managed to hide any surprise he felt at finding himself in front of this particular music shop moments earlier, and had promptly insulted John by offering to introduce him to the owner of the shop, a man who, he explained, worked only with the most promising students. 

“I recovered his stolen violin - one of my earliest cases. He owes me a favour – I’ll ask him to listen to you play and help you select a violin of your own.”

Sherlock pushed into the shop ahead of him and things fell together rather nicely from that point forward. He asked for Paolo, who greeted him like a long-lost brother, then introduced John, speaking so fast and confidently that Paolo didn’t even have a chance to clarify that he already knew John, though he played along readily when John reached for his hand and politely said “Pleased to meet you.”

“You may have seen John milling about - he’s been taking lessons here - with my violin, which I need again, so he’ll need another. You’ll need to hear him play, of course, to assess his level of competence and recommend an instrument that will best suit him.”

Paolo looked at John appraisingly, pretending to size him up. “And you’re agreeable? You’ll play for us?” he asked.

John straightened himself up to his full height, tamping down the desire to turn around and walk straight out the door so that Sherlock would never - ever - hear him play. 

“I’ll play,” he said, glancing over at Sherlock. “I’m scheduled for a lesson in a few minutes - and I left Sherlock’s violin here earlier in the week to be checked over for him now that he’s back.”

Paolo smiled again, still playing along. “Yes - I know. I had the pleasure of looking it over myself - it’s a fine instrument and in better condition even than when Mr. Holmes here brought it to us from time to time. I’m happy to see that it landed with someone who knew how to care for it. Go on in - I’ll fetch it and bring it to you.”

“Better condition? How could it be in better condition? John never touched the thing – he only ever complained about my playing.”

John ignored Sherlock and headed to the private lesson room, hoping his resolve would hold and he’d be able to play in front of Sherlock. Sherlock followed behind. “What did he mean? My violin was in excellent condition when I left.”

“Maybe I don’t play it quite so - aggressively,” John dared.

“I hardly play aggressively.” While John had settled into a chair to wait, Sherlock moved about the perimeter of the small room.

“Fine. Maybe I don’t play all night long, then. I let the poor thing rest now and then.”

“It doesn’t need rest.” 

John couldn’t help but smile. “Like someone else I know, then,” he said.

“Where _is_ he?” Sherlock frowned at the room in general, choosing to ignore John’s comment. He was too large for the small room, too impatient for this kind of waiting - when his fingers must be itching to take hold of his violin after two long years of absence. Oddly, his restlessness seemed to calm John. He had an idea that Paolo knew exactly what he was doing, that he was playing out an unspoken pact between himself and his student.

He was going to play something simple. Ode to Joy, perhaps. Simple in structure, in melody, the first composition he’d learned to play well and with confidence. But, if the first round went well enough, something he could play again with more flair, more nuance. Nothing approaching anything Sherlock could do, but this wasn’t really a competition about the music itself, or John’s ability to play at Sherlock’s level. It was, when it came down to it, all about Sherlock’s expectations. His preconceptions. 

Paolo appeared then, and Sherlock’s eyes went immediately to the violin he carried, and John very nearly felt sorry for him when Paolo passed Sherlock by and handed him violin and bow first, then several sheets of paper which John immediately recognized.

His heart skipped as he looked quickly up at Paolo, then, noting Sherlock observing him, immediately tried to school his features. He took the familiar sheets, studied them, then wet his lips slowly as he looked over at Paolo.

“I thought I’d start with something I’m more familiar with - Ode to Joy?”

Sherlock gave a condescending smile and opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, John stood and arranged the music on a stand, shooting Sherlock a murderous look. He’d been playing this piece for months now, the most difficult thing he’d attempted, and the piece he most wanted to perfect. According to Paolo, it was a piece by one of his former students - a waltz, though mournful and melancholic. 

John had played it at home and Mary had called it romantic and tragic, the saddest thing she’d ever heard. 

John didn’t agree. He felt the want in it, heard the hope, and couldn’t help but wonder if Paolo’s student had found whatever it was he or she was looking for.

“I’m told John’s not had this piece very long,” Paolo explained to Sherlock, “but if he’s going to change violins, I’d like to hear where he’s going, not where he’s been.” He nodded at John. “Whenever you’re ready.”

_I’ll never be ready,_ John thought. 

Not to play this piece. Not to play for Sherlock.

Yet, when it came down to it, in the end, it wasn’t so very hard to forget that Sherlock was in the room, standing, leaning against the wall near the far corner. Once he settled his chin on the instrument, felt the tension of the strings beneath his fingertips, positioned his other hand on the bow. He lifted his eyes once to Paolo, waiting for his nod, then took a deep breath, glanced at the sheet music, and closed his eyes.

He hadn’t needed the music in some time.

He didn’t look at Sherlock as he played, well aware that the sound he made was a paltry excuse for music. He wasn’t bad - he was fine. Adequate. But something had changed in him with this piece, and Paolo had seen it too, and the new music he was given now had a different flavor, a different feel. 

“It’s as if that piece was made for this violin,” John had said one afternoon, and Paolo had nodded in agreement, sad himself, John thought, and wondered about the student who’d shown such promise but had left this composition behind.

These brief hours here with Paolo and Sherlock’s violin and the smell of old wood and the callouses on his fingers and the irritated red spot on his neck - these hours were what kept him going through the grief when graveside conversations weren’t enough, and beers at the pub with Lestrade didn’t drown the sorrow. And now that Sherlock was back, and the grief was spent, and the sorrow was replaced by a simmering anger pock-marked with a reckless joy, John found that the violin could play a different song.

Still mournful and lovely, but with a spot of hope, and a taste of the blessed relief, the incandescent joy that couldn’t quite be contained.

He lost himself in this piece, as he always did, as Paolo had certainly known he would, and when it ended, he seemed almost surprised, and he looked up immediately at Sherlock, something he had told himself _not_ to do.

_Don’t expect his approval_ , he’d reminded himself as he began. _He only wants his violin. He can’t help but want it._

He would never - if he lived to a hundred and twenty - _never_ forget the look on Sherlock’s face. 

Stricken. 

It took Sherlock no more than the space of a minute to put it all together, turning his head to study Paolo, the pieces falling together in that marvelous brain of his, rearranging themselves until he had it sorted out.

John didn’t feel at all as triumphant as he wanted to feel.

“You’ve been teaching John. You gave him this piece to play.”

“Of course. He came into this shop nearly two years ago with your violin, and my name on your brother’s card.”

“Mycroft.”

Sherlock muttered the name, without emotion. John, still holding the violin, watched Sherlock try to get hold of himself again. It was disconcerting, so decidedly unlike Sherlock that John frowned.

“I always told you, didn’t I?” Paolo asked Sherlock, and John turned to watch, feeling like a nearly forgotten spectator. “The missing piece?”

Sherlock stared at Paolo for a long moment, then nodded his head curtly.

“Not the composition at all,” he murmured. “The execution.”

“Not just the execution – the interpretation.”

“What are you two on about?” John asked, but neither Sherlock nor Paolo answered. Instead, Sherlock pursed his lips, looking past John at nothing at all, or at something only he could see - lost in time, perhaps, or in space, but definitely not in the tiny practice studio.

“He’ll need my violin, then,” Sherlock said at last. Then he spun on his heel and left the room without looking back at John.

“What? No - wait - Sherlock!”

“Let him go, John.” Paolo’s voice was soft, his hand firm on his arm. “I think what we’ve given him to think about is going to require a long trip into that fabled mind palace of his.”

“What _we’ve_ given him to think about? What are you talking about?”

Paolo dropped an arm around John’s back in a show of camaraderie John certainly didn’t feel with life spinning around him and gravity failing and _damn_ but he’d missed this and couldn’t admit it. Not out loud. Not yet.

“I’m talking about that waltz, and Sherlock, and his violin. And you.”

“Me?” 

“Of course, you. No one else in the world would play that piece like you do, John.”

John might not understand what the hell was going on here, but he definitely knew that very nearly anyone who’d been around a violin for a year or two could play better than he did.

“You’re forgetting that I lived with Sherlock, Paolo. Anything I can do on the violin he can do blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back.”

Paolo dropped into the other chair in the room, facing John, and held up his hand when John opened his mouth to speak. “Hear me out, John. When I first gave you that piece, I told you it was composed by a former student. But I didn’t tell you that he was never happy with it. He wrote a lover’s lament in the form of a waltz, and no matter how often he played it, how he tweaked it, it was never what he wanted. So he abandoned it - here, with me. And I’m sure he forgot about it over the years, or tried to, because he’s a man who doesn’t like failure, and, until just a few minutes ago, I think, a man who didn’t understand love. He’s had an epiphany, John. He needs time to digest it.” 

John looked at Paolo, somehow not at all surprised. 

“It’s his - his piece.” He turned the words over in his mind, felt their weight in his heart. His fingers moved over the violin in his lap, feeling the smooth wood, the familiar shape. “I can’t keep this. It wouldn’t be right for Sherlock to use a different violin.”

“Pity you don’t live together still,” Paolo said with a shrug.

John considered the violin, and Paolo’s words, and the music on the stand.

There was no room for anger in his heart. 

“Yeah, pity,” he murmured. 

And he stood, and Mary Morstan was the furthest thing from his mind as he packed up the violin, left the shop, and set out for 221B


	12. Ode to Joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double chapter - and we're nearing the end, but not quite there yet.

The door sported a new coat of grey-green paint, but the door knocker was the same, though someone, John noticed immediately - probably the same person who’d been tasked with painting the door, had secured it with a second screw so that it remained perfectly aligned on an extremely conventional ninety degree angle.

John lifted his hand then dropped it to his side, hesitating. He glanced upward, but the window was closed and the curtains motionless behind it.

He felt out of place - standing here waiting, keyless. An outsider. Like one of the dozens of clients who’d come to them - to Sherlock - clients who’d waited here on the pavement much as he did now, hesitating….

Oh.

_Oscillation on the pavement always means there is a love affair._

He stepped forward quickly, rapped on the door, then straightened, hoping he looked a hundred times more confident than he felt.

Sherlock wasn’t home, but Mrs. Hudson was. She actually jumped backward a step when she opened the door and saw him standing there.

“Oh, John.”

He didn’t know how she managed the look on her face - a look that was ridiculously sad and entirely hopeful all at the same time. She ushered him in and put the kettle on then sat across from him and glanced at the violin resting in the chair at the end of the table.

“You’ve brought it back, then. I wondered if you might. He’s been - well, he’s been restless. Pacing.” Her eyes flicked upward. “He doesn’t pound up the stairs quite like he used to, and I think he might actually _sleep_ at night.” She studied him. “It seems his reappearance has had the opposite effect on you.”

“I’m fine. Shocked. Angry - of course I’m angry - but fine.”

“You’re not fine. _I’m_ not fine. Well, I wasn’t. Not at first. But he explained it all, why he did it, and how, and I’ve forgiven him.”

She went to get the kettle, prattling on about how odd it was to hear footsteps upstairs, but how wonderful, and how she so hoped John would start coming ‘round again.

John nodded, half-listening, and glanced around the room, breathing the air that was at once foreign and gut-wrenchingly familiar. Dust motes danced in the air, backlit by sunlight, and everything, in that moment, very nearly felt as it had always been, as he’d thought it would never again be.

He smelled banana bread. And warm tea. And lemon oil. 

“He’ll be home soon - dashed out of here early - faster than I’ve seen him move all week.” She placed the tea tray on the table and reached across for his hand. “I know you must be livid, John. But he’s asked our forgiveness, and how can I _not_?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer from him, and he didn’t mention that he couldn’t recall Sherlock asking _his_ forgiveness. “Oh - it will be nice to hear him play again, won’t it? Even in the middle of the night, I think. Sleep is overrated, Mrs. Hudson.” She said the last in a remarkably good imitation of Sherlock’s voice, and John couldn’t hide his grin when she said it.

Mrs. Hudson answered by leaning in, suddenly serious.

“How is Mary taking it, John? Has she met Sherlock? Do they get along? No - don’t answer that. How _could_ they? It _is_ Sherlock, after all. He’ll drive her as mad as she’ll drive him.”

“No - Mrs. Hudson - it’s not like that - really. They got along just fine - she liked him, believe it or not.“

Oh.” She seemed disappointed, though she didn’t say so, and sipped her tea thoughtfully. Her gaze came to rest, again, on the violin.

“Play something for me, John, won’t you?” she asked. 

John snorted.

“Mrs. Hudson - you don’t want to hear me murder Amazing Grace or Au Clair de la Lune. I’m sure Sherlock will be playing half the night.”

“But John - I want to hear _you_ play. You’re giving up the violin for him, aren’t you? Go on, then.”

She settled back in her chair and looked at him expectantly. 

He wouldn’t say that he was giving up the violin for Sherlock, but explaining his plan to Mrs. Hudson simply wasn’t going to happen. He sighed, knowing when he was beat, and hoisted the case up on the table. He took out the violin and raised the bow, drew it down over the strings. Paolo had prepared it to return to Sherlock, and it sounded nearly perfect - even to his less-than-expert ear. 

John looked across at Mrs. Hudson.

“Any requests? Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? O Come Little Children?” 

“Do you know Ode to Joy?” she asked. “It was my mother’s favorite - the first grown up piece she taught me on the piano when I was a girl. I asked Sherlock to play it for me once, and he blinked at me as if he had no idea what I was saying, then played something else entirely and told me I’d like it much better.” She frowned. 

John nearly grinned. He could hear Sherlock saying those very words, then throwing himself into a crescendo of music that was not at all what Mrs. Hudson had in mind. 

_Sentiment, Sherlock. A chemical defect found in the losing side._

“And did you?” asked John, knowing that the smile on his face was reaching his eyes. 

“Oh, no. Not at all. It was like a swarm of mad bees.”

They exchanged a smile, as if each of them had a secret they harboured inside about Sherlock, their own little private joke, then John, determined to give her the best rendition of Ode to Joy she’d ever heard, lifted his bow again and began to play the familiar tune. As it had been for Mrs. Hudson, it was the first grown-up piece he’d learned.

The song wasn’t terribly long, and he finished it then went back to the start to play it again, this time a more complex arrangement which still highlighted the simple melody. When he finished the second round, he lifted his head to look at Mrs. Hudson, but found her looking toward the door, and when he turned, was somehow not at all surprised to see Sherlock standing there.

How could the man look so unaltered by time when John’s entire world had been flipped on its side in his absence?

His expression was somewhere between smug - (I _knew_ it would be Ode to Joy) and wistful. John looked away and began to put up the violin, steeling himself to get on with what he’d come to say.

“Isn’t it lovely, Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson said. “And to think - two years ago John had never even touched a violin.”

“He’d touched it - he took it hostage three years ago and wouldn’t return it until I cleaned the mould out of the refrigerator.”

He looked at John, and at the violin, as he spoke, and John could feel the wheels turning, and knew that he’d surprised Sherlock by coming straight here.

“Which you never did,” John said, standing. The banter buoyed his confidence, put him on familiar ground. “You _painted_ over it.”

“I was disappointed it took you a week to notice. I thought your observation skills were much better than that.”

“They might have been if you hadn’t woken me at three o’clock in the morning demanding your violin back because you’d done what I demanded.”

“You were _sleeping_ with it! I _needed_ it!”

And there it was. 

“You still need it.” John closed the violin case, and there was a sense of finality in how he snapped the clasps. “I’ll bring it up. I wouldn’t mind seeing the flat again.” He forced a smile. “Check out the mould situation.”

John followed Sherlock up the stairs, a few steps behind him - in a dance achingly familiar, though slower, as if the water beneath the bridge had choked up with the flotsam and jetsam of the past. He paused in the doorway as Sherlock removed his coat, and looked around, wondering how his life might have been different - _felt_ different - if he’d had a home to return to after Afghanistan. Everything here, as it had been down at Mrs. Hudson’s, was the same yet felt so utterly different. Case notes that had hung on the wall that day - that day at Bart’s - were still pinned up. He could see Mrs. Hudson, standing there, looking away, not able to take them down. _Another day,_ another day.

He walked through the sitting room, into the kitchen. The kitchen table was already a disaster, the counter littered with unwashed mugs. Sherlock’s bathrobe had been discarded on the sofa, and a stack of newspapers more than a foot high was piled, messily, on John’s chair. 

“I wasn’t expecting company,” Sherlock said. He moved the stack of papers onto the floor, ignored that half the stack promptly toppled over, and motioned John into his customary chair. 

John sat, and rested the violin on his knees, keeping one hand on it in a gesture that did not go unnoticed by Sherlock.

“I’m not company,” he said, disliking the sound of the word as he repeated it. “Company gets tea.”

“You just had tea.” Sherlock glanced into the kitchen, surveying the small yet threatening army of dirty mugs and spoons. “I’d have washed up if I’d known….”

“No you wouldn’t have,” John said.

Sherlock had a just-barely-there smile on his face as he answered.

“You’re right, of course.”

“So - I’ve something to say,” John managed after a silence in which he looked into all the corners of the flat, aware that Sherlock was studying all the new wrinkles on his face and the intriguing callouses on his fingertips. “And you need to sit there and hear me out, and then ask any questions you have, and then I’m going to leave while you think it over, but you can’t think it over forever - I can’t leave...things...well, I can’t leave them hanging for too long. You’ll see what I mean if I ever manage to get the words out. No - don’t interrupt. Please. Just...just listen.”

He thought Sherlock looked puzzled, and intrigued, and a small bit afraid, but mainly intrigued. He leaned in slightly, and John wondered if perhaps he was approaching this very important conversation as a necessary prelude to winning back the coveted violin. But no - no more than two hours ago, he had conceded the violin to John, leaving the shop in quite a hurry after hearing John play the waltz he himself had composed.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Sherlock said as John tried to gather his thoughts and determine how, exactly, he was going to tell Sherlock what the past two years had been for him, and how he had no intention of slipping back into their life as it had been before Bart’s. “I should explain - about my behavior earlier.”

John laughed, disbelieving.

“You never explain your behavior,” he said. 

“Because it’s usually impeccable.” Sherlock said as he pretended to examine his fingernails.

“Don’t get me started,” John warned. He was having a very difficult time staying on topic sitting here in his old chair, with Sherlock trying hard to be _good_ and 221B feeling so goddamn much like _home_. “Besides, Paolo explained - well, he told me about that piece. I didn’t know - you do realise that, don’t you? He’d never told me it was yours.”

“You played it willingly enough - you wouldn’t have done had you known it was mine - no matter how much you wanted to show me up.”

“I didn’t want to show you up.”

“You did.” Sherlock didn’t sound smug. 

“Alright. I did. You’ve no idea how I’ve spent the last two years, do you? No - don’t answer that.” John pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to gather himself together. Somehow, the sight of the kitchen table, looking more like the victim of a land mine than an insentient piece of furniture, steadied him. “Sherlock - I want to hear your story. I want to hear all of it - the whys and the hows and why you came back and why you had to keep it such a goddamn bloody secret, why you didn’t - couldn’t - trust me. But it’s not going to change how I feel, or what I’m about to tell you.”

Sherlock looked up from his observation of his nails, his expression hardening. “As you’ve already decided your reaction prior to me sharing the details with you, I see no reason to put either of us through the turmoil of a retelling.” His hand strayed to his face as if recalling John’s fist. 

Something in his voice - the stubborn obstinance, perhaps - gave John the courage to continue. If he was going to humiliate himself, he may as well do it butt-naked and in front of a large jeering crowd.

“No - Sherlock. You’ve got it wrong. Would you just listen - please? Because I’m going to tell you something, and you’re either going to like it, or hate it, or be bloody terrified, and then I’m going to leave you to sort through it all and decide it you’re willing to take what I’m about to offer - if you can live with my terms. Because - .” He stopped, blew out a sharp puff of air and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. The familiar ceiling with the carrot-shaped water stain above the sofa and the splattered blue blobs from something Sherlock exploded the first week John lived here. He closed his eyes. Maybe this wasn’t the right time. Maybe he didn’t really want this. Maybe ….

“I can live with your terms. It will be refreshing to not have to learn new names all the time, and risk calling Meredith Sarah or Jane Penelope. Mary - Mary I can remember.”

“Right.” John pressed his lips together, biting back a smile. “Convenient of me to settle on a woman with an easy to remember name.”

“She has an interesting face as well,” Sherlock added. “The combination of the name and the face make it highly unlikely I’ll forget who she is when you come ‘round with the children on Boxing Day. I do hope they’ll be well-behaved, John. I’d hate to have to bar you from 221B because your offspring can’t keep their grubby hands off my microscope.”

Offspring. Offspring with grubby hands. Little blonde mini Johns and mini Marys and….no.

“Microscope?” He raised an eyebrow, playing along. “I’d have thought you’d be more worried about your violin.”

“Why would I worry about that? You’ll have taught them to play. They’ll respect the violin. But the microscope - ”

“Stop. Just - just stop.” John dropped his head in his hands and took a deep breath. He may as well be in labour with all the deep breathing he was doing today. 

“Fine. William Sherlock Scott Holmes.”

John jerked his head up again. “William Sherlock what?”

“My name. For a boy, of course. Though Sherlock’s actually a girl’s name.”

John snorted. He’d had no idea he’d actually missed this type of agonisingly frustrating circular conversation, the kind of conversation that would go absolutely nowhere if he didn’t take control. “Look - I’m going to say this once. And you aren’t going to distract me anymore. So sit there - please, Sherlock - and listen.”

He stared evenly at Sherlock until Sherlock gave a brief, uncomfortable nod, and settled into the chair, looking at John, unfortunately, as if he were a client about to relate his sordid past.

“I spent the year after you died trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I’d sit in front of your tombstone talking to you for hours. And one day your brother showed up and told me I needed to talk to someone who might actually talk back. And he gave me the name of a therapist - someone he said you trusted. And he offered to pay for it with your estate since you were the one who caused the whole bloody mess. And I took him up on it and it was the best thing - the _best_ thing I could have done. So after I’m done here, you can thank him, or kill him. You decide.”

He had Sherlock’s attention now, and wondered if Sherlock’s stomach felt anything like his, and if Sherlock was thinking about Dr. Wohlberg. 

“And what I learned - what I learned is that - that - ” He forced himself to meet Sherlock’s eyes, and lowered his voice, though there was no one there to overhear. “I learned - realised - that I loved you.” 

Sherlock’s expression didn’t change, though he blinked - twice - as if checking to see if John had changed into a circus elephant or a prancing unicorn. He continued to stare at John, and John couldn’t help but think that perhaps he hadn’t understood. 

“No - that’s not right.” John looked down at his clenched his hands in his lap, then up again at Sherlock, who now looked like he was considering the most vexing, troubling case and he couldn’t quite put the pieces together. “Well - not quite right. I didn’t just love you. I was - I was _in love_ with you.” 

In love. Love. Miles and miles and miles of distance between the two.

And that seemed to jump-start Sherlock’s brain.

“You’re not gay. You’ve said it a hundred times. You’ve slept with no less than eleven women in this flat. You don’t look at men. There is nothing in your personality, in your behavior, or in your appearance - though you may rightly claim I am applying stereotypical norms - that sets you apart from any other straight man in London. You can love me as a friend, you can mourn me when I’m gone, but you cannot be in love withe me. Straight men do not fall in love with other men.”

Oddly, John was finding Sherlock’s reaction not only endearing, but so comfortingly _Sherlock_ that he waited for the well-reasoned deduction to end, then waited another thirty seconds while Sherlock stared at him.

“Alright,” he said at last, remembering those grueling, emotional sessions with Dr. Wohlberg and realising that this moment was, for good or ill, the validation of all he had learned about himself, but was less the turning point in his life than the initial realisation all those long months ago. “Alright.” He leaned over and picked up the violin case from the floor beside the chair, and stood, and carried it over to the window, and leaned it against the wall. He looked out the window at the familiar view, and saw Mrs. Hudson lift a finger to hail a passing cab, which stopped, as if Sherlock himself had hailed it, and carried her off to parts unknown.

He turned again, and caught a look on Sherlock’s face that was nothing but abject longing - for what, John wished he could say. For the violin? The life they’d led? For John himself?

“I’ll suspend disbelief for the moment,” Sherlock said as John opened his mouth to speak. “And remind you that you have a fiance. You’ve bought a ring. You meant to propose to her that night. You’ve surely tied that up since.”

“Actually - she declined.” John unconsciously stood straighter, hands behind his back. “She thought I should get things sorted with you first. She still intends to marry me, I think, after I get over the shock of your sudden reappearance.”

“Well, then. All the best and many happy returns and….”

“Will you shut up? Please.” John stepped forward. He took another deep breath. “I’ve been lying to myself since that first day, Sherlock. And I’ve only started acknowledging the truth in the last year. That I’m not exactly as straight as I thought I was. Not gay - I don’t think you can still like women like I do if you’re strictly gay. But not straight - if the definition of straight is someone who is only attracted to people of the opposite sex. Because I like Mary. Love her. Wanted her. But - but right now - right now I just want to tell her the truth. That I’ll never love her - ” His chest was getting tight now, and he found it more and more difficult to get the words out. His voice was hoarse, catching in his throat. “I’ll never love her as much as I love you. God damnit Sherlock - I just want to stop looking for what I already have. And I thought I didn’t have it - because you were gone - dead - but you’re not. And I can’t - I can’t...settle.”

Sherlock - beautiful, maddening, ridiculous, traitorous, not dead at all Sherlock - stared dumbly back at him.

_Fuck fuck fuck._

“Alright. I’ve said it. And I’ve probably tipped your world over on its side, and you’re trying to figure out how you deal with this, because you don’t do relationships and I’m not gay. But I couldn’t not say it. I couldn’t. Because I’m not going to come back here and be your bloody flatmate, Sherlock. I’m going to figure out how to get over you and move on - with Mary, or with someone - if you won’t have me, and by the look on your face I think you’d rather marry Donovan than deal with this - no? Anderson, then. Yeah.”

“John - ”

“Do you know - do you know what it was _like_ for me, Sherlock? Listening to you on the phone - seeing you standing up there? Do you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out of your chest? To be totally incapacitated by grief - and have so little self-awareness that you have to go to a bloody psychiatrist to figure out that you loved someone and that you can be bisexual even if you’ve never ever been with a man?” 

“John.”

He said it softly - and there was something in his voice, something in the way he looked at John, in the unexpected seriousness, that struck John deeply. He paused, wondering if he’d gone too far - but what the hell was too far with Sherlock?

“Sit. I’d like to try something.” 

And John sat, dumbly, eyes on Sherlock.

Who stood, and went to the window, opened the violin case, extracted the violin and lifted it, tucking it against his chin and lifting the bow quickly. He drew the bow down as his fingers pressed against the strings, the angle of the damaged fingers awkward, but the sound clear and melodic and as beautiful as any note he had ever produced.

He paused, made the slightest adjustment to the tension of a string, then flexed the fingers of his left hand and began to play. 

The waltz. Of course it was the waltz.

How could John have thought he was beginning to master the piece? How could he ever have believed he was making music?

He’d heard Sherlock play a thousand times, had snatched the violin from his hands at three o’clock in the morning, had dozed on the sofa while the music played in his dreams. He’d heard him play frantically, and softly, had felt subtle notes trickle into the cracks of the walls, imbuing the flat one day with an ethereal melancholy, another with a frantic joy. In the day, when life was sweeter, when danger, not anger, kept his heart pumping madly, he’d learned that Sherlock dispelled energy through his music, bled emotion, unwound as he wrapped himself in a cocoon of his own making.

But never before had the music touched him quite like this.

Perhaps it was the familiarity of the notes, his personal closeness to the composition. Or perhaps it was hearing Sherlock play again after all these months when John had nothing but his own fumbling efforts to feed his hungry soul.

John watched Sherlock’s fingers, transfixed as he’d never been before by their movement, watching incredulously as the two damaged fingers worked over the strings. And it occurred to him, suddenly, but with great conviction, that Sherlock had written a love song as a waltz, a dance for two people comfortable in each other’s shadows, one to lead, another to follow, but each looking quite ridiculous and getting nowhere without the other.

“I don’t have any idea how to do this,” Sherlock said when he’d finished, even before the last note sailed out the window into the London they both loved. 

“I don’t either,” John answered.

Sherlock turned to face the window, and lifted the violin again, and that it was Ode to Joy he played, clear and crisp and simple, was as clear a declaration of love as any Sherlock would ever make.


	13. Saint or Sinner?

As it turned out, being with Sherlock had some unusual conditions.

Sherlock finished playing Ode to Joy, then stood there, eyes closed, violin pressed against his cheek, as if reluctant to let the moment end. He didn’t look at John as he knelt to put away the violin, and when he settled back down in his chair, John immediately stood.

“Tea,” he said into the deafening silence. “I’ll make tea.”

He gave Sherlock what he intended to be an encouraging smile but which was, in fact, a wooden, strained effort at best, and padded into the kitchen. But as he was rooting around in a kitchen cupboard for clean cups, Sherlock appeared, looking a good bit irritated, and closed the cupboard door on his fingers.

“You can’t do this.” Sherlock waved his arm vaguely, at the flat in general and at nothing in particular. “We’re not finished - there’s a logical progression to life altering moments and one doesn’t stop in the middle for tea.”

He was so bloody _sincere_ about it, so uncomfortably befuddled and out of sorts, that John gave up on the idea of tea and having a few minutes alone to sort himself out before they moved on to the difficult part - the part where they stopped having monologues and started actually _talking_.

At that moment, he wasn’t thinking of kissing, though Sherlock was standing far too close to him, just as he’d done a thousand times before, social conventions of personal space having no relevance in his reality, though never before after declarations of love and heart-wrenching violin compositions.

“Life altering?” John placed the mug he had managed to hold onto on the counter, automatically turning it so the handle pointed to the left just as he liked it. He turned to face Sherlock and leaned back against the countertop. Sherlock had that look - oh God - _that_ look. The _I’ve finally solved this damn case and we have to go_ now _and I won’t sleep or eat or think of anything else until we break into the British Museum at four in the morning and verify my deductions_ look. The _I can’t possibly hold this in one more second John so come at once_ look. 

“I can’t wait much longer, John. It’s been _hours_ already!”

John’s mouth fell open.

_Hours._

“Hours?” John repeated.

“Hours since you played. Hours since I understood.” He was staring at John, no longer avoiding his eyes.

“Hours.” John tried not to judge the universe for the gut-wrenching year he’d spent after Sherlock died, puzzling out - through his grief - what Sherlock was, or had been, to him. “And now…?’

“You played. I understood. I sat in the park and thought. I came home, not expecting to see you again for some time, but you were here, and there were declarations, and now you’re trying to make tea.”

He said it as if the act of John making tea was as repugnant as being forced to spend an afternoon with Mycroft shopping for pre-packaged under garments.

“I stopped trying to make tea when you closed the cupboard door on my fingers,” John said, but he said it with a good deal of affection, the sort of affection he hadn’t seen coming and couldn’t quite control. “Why don’t you tell me what it is you want if it’s not tea. Since it’s been - hours.” He adjusted his hip against the counter, getting comfortable in this familiar game. Flirting. God help him he was _flirting_ with Sherlock Holmes.

Who apparently did not understand the art or was immune to John’s well-developed techniques, if the exasperated look on Sherlock’s face was anything to go by. 

“I want - ” Sherlock faltered. He was staring at John’s mouth now, and seemed to be having trouble putting words together. “I want ….” He looked up and met John’s eyes, then let his gaze stray back to his mouth again. “The mustache. I’m sorry - but it has to go.”

ooOOOOoo

It was, perhaps, the single most erotic moment he’d ever experienced.

Sitting on a stool in the bathroom, stripped down to his vest on top, impossibly soft white towel draped over his shoulders, holding perfectly still as Sherlock steadied his chin with sure fingers and carefully scraped away his mustache with the straight bladed razor.

He was so close, his body filling the small room, mere inches from John. Breath on his face as he worked - careful, diligent, slow. One short pass at a time, smoothing in the shaving cream with calloused thumb that grazed John’s lip. Razor so dangerously close to his neck, rasping against delicate skin no longer tough with desert sand and wind and sun. 

John remained frozen, craving the touch, craving _more_ because Sherlock was _killing_ him and didn’t have any idea what he was _doing_ to him with voice and touch and scent and fuck if John couldn’t _taste_ the anticipation in the air around them.

He wondered if Sherlock knew, if he had any clue at all.

Sherlock spoke while he worked. Low, nearly a monotone, factual. 

“You’ve not had this done for you before. You’re frugal and self-sufficient, unaccustomed to simple luxuries.”

Sherlock wiped the razor and lowered it again, scraping carefully as John remained as still as possible.

“Mine was far longer than yours when Mycroft came for me. I’d not had - opportunity - to shave in some time. It aided the disguise - I was hiding, pretending to be someone I’m not. An acceptable reason to grow a mustache, but not a valid one to keep it when you can resume being who you really are.”

No. Not at all clueless. 

The calloused thumb ran over a patch of newly bare skin, then the razor returned as fingers tipped his head back a fraction more.

“It was Serbia.” Sherlock’s voice thrummed low near his ear as the razor scraped again. “I miscalculated - badly. No - don’t move yet.”

John wouldn’t dream of moving.

“Mycroft came for me.” Fingers trailed down his neck and came to rest on his bare shoulder, just above his scar. “Impeccable timing - as usual.” The razor moved over the delicate area just beneath his nostrils, working with surgical precision. John held his breath automatically as a curious thumb brushed over the shiny, damaged skin of his scar. “When we got back, my reward for putting up with his smugness was a shave and a haircut from his personal barber. I doubt even you would have recognized me before.”

Sherlock finished and carefully placed the razor on the vanity, and John reached for his wrist with a fluid, automatic movement, and pulled him forward.

“I would have come,” he said as Sherlock stepped into the vee of his legs. He choked on the words, biting back regret. Sherlock was close - so very, very close. He touched his waist, settled his hand there, ran a thumb over the tailored shirt, feeling skin and bone and sinew. “And I would have recognized you.” 

He meant to take things slowly, because he was running on instinct alone, and didn’t really believe it could be so _easy_. Not with another man, and especially not with Sherlock. He felt this - this moment - and he didn’t want to destroy it by making an inane blunder, but he didn’t know where to look, or where to put his other hand, and whether to kiss the corner of his mouth first, to test the waters, or to snog him senseless and push him into the bathtub and climb atop him as Sherlock fumbled for purchase and struggled for breath or -

Sherlock kissed him.

Everything about it was different. The angle - he was unused to fingers under his chin, tilting his head up. The roughness. Lips too long uncared for, chapped and coarse. No gentle glide, no scent of berries. Too much pressure. No finesse. No follow-through. No soft swipe of tongue. No hand kneading the back of his neck, carding into his hair. No cloying scent of Clair de Lune.

Noses pressed against each other and they struggled for breath. A most familiar scent, like pressing his nose into the last jacket Sherlock had worn, before he left 221B for good. Dropping to his knees at the foot of Sherlock’s bed and weeping into the tangled sheets.

“Oh, God. John.”

Sherlock pulled away, misreading him as he faltered.

“Hold on.” John snaked his hand around Sherlock’s neck, rested their foreheads together and forced his breathing to slow. His voice was shaky. “Just hold on a minute.”

Sherlock was so close. So close. All eyes and cheeks and mouth and thumping heart and shirt that smelled like crumpled bedsheets and tears and music.

“That wasn’t at all like the book,” Sherlock murmured. 

“Book?” John framed Sherlock’s head with his hands, wove fingers into Sherlock’s hair and kissed the corner of his mouth. “You expected kissing me to be like it’s portrayed in what - a novel?”

“I don’t read fiction.”

John chuckled and kissed Sherlock’s mouth again, and Sherlock turned into the kiss, an accident, perhaps, as it seemed to surprise him.

“Non-fiction,” John whispered. “You read _how_ to do this - an instructional book.”

John’s lips were still on his when Sherlock murmured.

“John - I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I know.”

And it shouldn’t have made them laugh - both of them - but it did, and soon their shoulders were shaking with it, and they leaned against each other, John on the ridiculous stool, Sherlock standing in the vee of his legs, pressed up against him in the too-small space. And it was Sherlock’s shudder as John molded himself against him, arms tight and possessive around him, kissing the juncture of neck and collarbone, pressing cool lips just below his ear, that pulled him down and under, that banished those lingering thoughts of Mary, and what she would say when he came home disheveled, upper lip bare, smelling of 221B, and Mrs. Hudson’s banana bread, and Sherlock Holmes. 

Sherlock may have read a rubbish how-to book on the art of kissing, but he was a quick study, and John was experienced enough to realize that kissing is kissing is kissing….

Except that everything fell apart and the rules got turned on their heads when he was suddenly kissing the last partner he’d ever have.

And he realised, as he writhed on the bathroom floor with his shoulders out the door, a stool tottering at his heels, and the world’s only consulting detective straddling his thighs, that his previous life with Sherlock - the one that pulled him out of his darkest hour and pushed him to the edge of sanity - was only half a life, and that _that_ Sherlock, in all his glory, was only a small measure of the man. That every sexual experience he’d ever had before that moment was only a prelude, a walk-through, a dress rehearsal. 

That no other lover - ever - would spend as much time learning the scatter pattern of moles on his stomach, the precise dimensions of the shell of his ear, the contour map of the scar on his shoulder.

No one would ever be as utterly fascinated by him as he was by them. No one would help him perfect his violin form by studying the callouses on his fingertips, lean over his shoulder as he worked on his blog, distracting him with a whisper of desire as he closed the laptop softly over his fingers.

The customary rules would fall away with Sherlock Holmes, who’d bring a magnifying lens to bed to study the wrinkles on John’s face, who’d document the dilation of his pupils in a dozen controlled conditions, who’d keep a spreadsheet to track his resting pulse. 

But before that - before all of that - there was Mary Morstan, waiting at home for John in the flat they shared. Mary dressed for dinner, idly clicking through the channels, glancing toward the door, picking out the sounds of neighbors coming, neighbors going.

Mary standing at the window, curtain held back, dropping the curtain and picking up her mobile.

Mary noticing, at last, the unread text.

_Saint or Sinner?_  
James or John?  
The more is less? 

 

_TBC_


	14. Every Happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, of sorts.

In another reality, John Watson might have died that night, burned alive in a Guy Fawkes bonfire at Saint James the Less Church.

In another universe, Sherlock might have been killed by the cab that struck him as he launched himself at the men who’d ambushed them and who were shoving an unconscious John into a car. Might have been struck and killed by the same cab that hit that same car, rendering it undrivable, and forcing their assailants to flee on foot.

But the world as they knew it had shifted on its axis during those frozen hours at 221B, and the normal trajectories of time and cause and effect seemed altered. 

The universe, it turned out, was not so cruel as to rob them of a joy so recently won, and so very long in the making.

ooOOOOoo

It was lucky - fortuitous, Sherlock would say - that Mary Morstan arrived at the hospital, sent that way by a shaky Mrs. Hudson, just as Mycroft Holmes’ car pulled up.

Mycroft recognized her of course - he’d made it his business to know who she was as soon as she and John Watson had begun dating, and, after watching her for months, had judged her safe enough, no matter her background. A background, he noted, that she fervently wished to leave behind her. 

A background he would have to share with Sherlock - once Sherlock opened his eyes enough to notice who, exactly, had replaced him in the good doctor’s heart.

Or at least made him budge over to make more room, Mycroft allowed.

It was no coincidence at all, he thought, that John Watson would take up with one of the most dangerous women in America, one who’d escaped to London to lose herself in the teeming yet orderly chaos of the city.

Sherlock’s eyes would have been blown open wide tonight, Mycroft realised, as, after hurried introductions in front of the A&E, she agreed to sit with him a moment in the back seat of the car in which he’d arrived, and showed him the text messages she’d received.

Simple skip code - they both recognised it immediately. She offered no weak explanation for knowing what it was. 

_Save John Watson. Saint James the Less._

“What is it?” she’d asked. “St James the Less?”

“A church,” he’d said, memorising the message and the phone number from which it came. 

“A church?” She side-eyed Mycroft then gazed at her mobile again. “Why would they take John to a church?”

“Or lure you to one?” Mycroft murmured. He glanced at her, then let his fingers dance over his own mobile. “I suspect it will have something to do with the Guy Fawkes celebrations - the bonfire, perhaps?”

She was good - very good. But he was just as good, perhaps better. He saw the momentary confusion before she covered it with a smile - equal parts worried and relieved.

The name Guy Fawkes hadn’t immediately resonated with her. Sherlock would have noted that immediately, would have begun to suspect, to dig deeper.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” She looked pointedly at the door. “I’d like to see John now. Have you had a status?”

He didn’t bother denying that he’d had initial reports on both his brother and John Watson.

“A paralytic - they haven’t yet identified it - injected directly into the neck. Broken arm from the crash, some contusions. A gash on his lip that they’ve already sutured.”

“And Sherlock?” Interesting that she didn’t inquire more about the drug.

“His head was slammed into a brick wall, then he was hit by a car. He’s lucky to be alive - and relatively uninjured, considering. Likely concussion. Contusions. Broken arm - his right, to counter John’s left. That’s the initial report, at least. They’ve both been admitted.”

She looked away, back at her phone.

“Who were these men, Miss Morstan?” he asked in the quiet, not-quite-threatening tone he’d perfected over the years. “Why did they go after John? He’s hardly the target my brother is, yet they obviously had no intention of kidnapping Sherlock.”

She didn’t answer immediately, just pressed her lips together, considering, before she gave him an appraising look.

“John was to be the bait, not the target,” she said at last. “As you know as well as I.” She pushed open the car door.

“You might consider evasive action,” Mycroft suggested in a soft but not warm voice. “John is distracted by Sherlock’s return. He may not prove as attentive as he was previously. Are you familiar with synergy, Miss Morstan?”

“Of course.” She was standing outside the car door, more tired and resigned than angry, which spoke highly of her character. Not many could stay as calm when up against the corporeal spectre of Mycroft Holmes. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

“Sherlock and John,” Mycroft said. 

They stared at each other for a very long time, two sharp and single-minded people.

“There is not a single detail about you - about your past - that Sherlock won’t discover when he puts his mind to it. I do not habitually give relationship advice, but I know my brother and I know John Watson. Tell John the truth, or get out of the picture before Sherlock finds a reason to question anything about you.”

“That sounds like a threat,” Mary said, voice deceptively casual. 

Mycroft opened his own door and got out, gazing at Mary across the roof of the car.

“Not even close,” he said, his voice as calm and casual as hers. “But someone wanted to draw you out - or perhaps Sherlock, though I don’t believe he received any skip codes tonight - and they were willing to sacrifice John to do so. There is no possible way in the world that Sherlock will let this go.”

He tipped an imaginary hat and turned away, heading into the A&E. Mary caught up with him quickly, and when they walked together to the desk, they could have been any couple - brother and sister, friends, lovers. It was impossible to guess as absolutely nothing in their body language gave away a thing.

ooOOOOoo

Paralysis came quickly, immobilizing his limbs before his eyes fell shut.

He was only vaguely aware of Sherlock, of grunts and a muffled shout. 

Mercifully, he didn’t recall the screaming grind of metal, or the sound of Sherlock’s body hitting the pavement.

ooOOOOoo

Someone was holding his hand, rubbing their thumb over his palm, squeezing his fingertips. Someone sitting on his right side, someone smoothing a warm hand over his forehead.

He ignored it as best he could as he tried to piece things together with a muddled, fuzzy brain that was taking its time to re-connect to the world around him.

Still, it took him no more than a minute to deduce that he was in hospital. He’d spent too much time in hospitals to miss the obvious clues - the echoes, the smells, the whispers, the angle of the mattress behind his back. 

He hurt. His arm throbbed. He wondered if he’d knocked out teeth. A dim and contorted memory of a car crash - but he hadn’t been in a car, had he? He’d been out - out walking - and Sherlock - Sherlock was going to hail a cab….

Sherlock.

He said something - tried to speak - but what came out of his mouth didn’t sound like words.

“John?”

He mumbled again - clawed at the bedsheets with his right hand. The fingers tightened, stroked over his wrist.

“John, calm down.”

Mary. Mary squeezing his hand. Mary keeping her voice low. 

“You’re in hospital. You’ve had an accident.”

He turned his head toward her voice, protesting on a tongue that would not cooperate. Foggy shadows took shape in his mind. Men. An arm around his throat. Not an accident. An attack.

“Hey. John - John, please….”

What the fuck had happened? How long? Where was Sherlock?

He stopped struggling - with his hand, in his mind. He lay still. Concentrated on breathing. Breath in, breath out, until his eyes cooperated and he opened them to the dimly lit room.

Night then. 

He swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. 

“Water.”

The word stuck in his throat, a hoarse and raw sound.

He sucked through the straw she offered and continued to breathe while his vision gradually cleared.

He looked at Mary.

Dressed for dinner. Forced smile on her face. Tired. Restless.

“Hi,” she said. The smile was less forced. She looked relieved.

“Hi.” The sound was scratchy, low. He considered his next words. “What happened?”

“They’re trying to figure that out,” she said. The forced smile again. Liar.

“Sherlock?”

A small frown, turned around quickly.

“He’s here. He’ll be fine.”

John closed his eyes.

Fine. He’ll be fine. Not fine now, then. 

A thumb, soft yet strong, ran across one side of his upper lip.

“Pity about your mustache,” Mary said. “You look good without it - though I don’t suppose you’ll be kissing anyone for a while.”

_Anyone._

The sad smile was back again, the one that didn’t reach her eyes, and she bent and pressed a chaste kiss on the corner of his mouth as her finger grazed over the dressing on his lip beneath his nose.

He winced.

“Fourteen stitches. You can grow it right back to hide the scar.”

He didn’t care a bit about a scar.

“Arm?” he asked, attempting to move his uncooperative left arm.

“Broken - radius and ulna. Swelling has to go down a bit before they pin it. Are you in pain?”

“Fuzzy.” It wasn’t an answer, but he didn’t want to be any more doped up than he already felt. He closed his eyes. He hoped those were the extent of his injuries - though they didn’t seem to be enough to keep him in hospital, unless the arm was more complicated than it seemed. 

“Ah.”

Mary offered the water again, and he sipped it.

“I went up to see Sherlock earlier,” Mary said. “When they told me you’d be unconscious for a few hours more.”

John’s heart sped up. Sherlock could have visitors, then. “How is he?” His voice was not as steady as he wanted it to be.

“In form. He broke up with me. For you.”

She managed to keep her cool, and John managed - just barely - not to sputter.

“He said you might have trouble with it, given the circumstances. He’s been - well, _difficult_ hardly sums it up adequately.”

John smiled, which didn’t help the throbbing in his lip. Sherlock being difficult meant that Sherlock wasn’t gravely injured. Sherlock talking meant that he wasn’t unconscious. Sherlock breaking up with Mary _for_ him was so utterly _Sherlock_ that there was certainly no irreparable mental damage. That John didn’t want to throttle him spoke volumes as well.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” John murmured. 

“Your Lestrade already apologized for him,” she said, and there was a hint of a smile behind her eyes. “Did I mention that Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade were all in the room? And someday you’ll have to tell me what’s going on between Mycroft and Lestrade.” 

“Mycroft and Lestr – what?”

She ignored him – moving on.

“Mrs. Hudson said ‘Oh Sherlock! No!’ and Mycroft rolled his eyes and Lestrade said ‘You’ll get used to it’ but frankly, as much as getting to the point where things he says seem _normal_ has some appeal, I don’t think I’ll be around long enough for that to happen.”

“It really doesn’t take that long,” John said. He was looking at her, head turned on the pillow to watch her as she spoke.

“I notice you’re not apologising for him. Or telling me to ignore anything he says.”

“Mary -” he began, but his head hurt and his lip pulled and his arm throbbed and he really didn’t know what he wanted to say. 

“Don’t. I expected this - eventually. Though I thought it would take him a lot longer to get his head out of his arse, frankly.” 

They both smiled, and it was awkward, but with an almost gratifying sense of finality. 

Mary squeezed his hand.

“Every happiness, John. I don’t think you’ll be seeing much of me from now on.”

She pressed another kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“At least you didn’t shave for him,” she murmured.

He didn’t bother to correct her, and Mary Morstan stood, and quietly left the building.


	15. No Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for an explicit (M) rating in this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter - later this week. <3

John would never see Mary Morstan again.

He’d see Adelle - the woman she’d been, in a report from Mycroft. Impossible details that neither shocked nor surprised him. _Just so you’ll know, John. If she ever tries to come back._

He wished her well, and wondered what would have happened had he gone on and married her. What Sherlock would have done with the information. What kind of couple they’d have been, building a life on a foundation of lies.

_Not gay._

_Not dead._

And later, he’d see Sandy, one of the women she’d become. John would stumble upon her three years later in a warehouse outside of Prague, her gun trained on Sherlock. Sherlock would bark at John not to shoot, and she’d drop her gun at Sherlock’s order, because John would have shot first and asked questions later.

They’d stare each other down as Sherlock collected her gun, and John would keep his trained on her. A killing shot with his flawless aim.

Sherlock would say something into her ear that John would never hear, and she’d slip away, a shadow in the night.

She’d live because Sherlock intervened.

John didn’t give second chances when it came to Sherlock. He didn’t think Sherlock had enough lives left.

ooOOOOoo

Take it slowly, he’d told himself.

Ease into it. 

Find a flat of your own for a few months. Move your things there. Don’t fall back into the old patterns. 

Partners.

Equals.

Establish expectations. 

Be mature. Measured. 

Talk about things. Sharing expenses. Sharing space. Sharing a bed.

Talk about feelings.

Who the hell was he kidding?

Mycroft’s car deposited them both at 221B as if there were no other options, and Mrs. Hudson fussed over them and made them tea, and within an hour, before John’s pain pill could even kick in, Lestrade was there with a hot case file that he dumped in front of Sherlock and a take-away bag that he dropped in John’s lap. Sherlock spent five minutes with the file then jumped to his feet, got light-headed, and tipped forward.

Lestrade found himself with an armful of Sherlock, and John laughed himself into a coughing fit.

_Begin as you mean to go on._

Begin with friends and family - a case from Lestrade, a report from Mycroft, tea and scones from Mrs. Hudson.

Begin with his wallet and keys on Sherlock’s dresser, his mobile on the bedstand. 

Begin with a London lullaby rising from the pavement outside the window. 

Cut through the awkwardness by claiming the left side of the bed, Sherlock’s left hand held in his right, lying there in the semi-darkness too tired to fall asleep, too alert to stop thinking.

Breathing in tandem. The bed spinning with his head as he begins to let go of the fear that he’s doing this all wrong - too fast, too much, letting himself fall down the rabbit hole again and again and again.

Remembering fog-covered days of hopelessness, talking to nothingness, baring his woeful soul to the wind, no solid weight of flesh against his fingers. 

Feeling the weight of the world lift from his chest like a murmuration of starlings startled from a field.

It isn’t much, it shouldn’t feel so powerful, so overwhelming, this simple act of lying beside someone, cocooned in softness, in comfort, in darkness. Of all the sensual places on the body, the feeling of fingers entwined should be a nothing, a one on the Richter Scale of earth-shattering experiences. 

_Begin as you mean to go on_.

Equal players. Matching broken arms. Ten fingers each. Height irrelevant on the flat plane of mattress, darkness masking differences.

He hadn’t really thought much about his first night with Sherlock. They’d already had a hundred firsts - first argument, first fist fight, first date, first kiss, first time rutting on the bathroom floor together.

First time Sherlock had left him.

Death. Resurrection. Second chances people don’t usually get.

They’d slept in the same bed a half dozen times - out on cases, holed up in that tiny village while the rental car company found another car for them to replace the one at the bottom of the loch.

They hadn’t held hands those nights. Hadn’t touched each other. John hadn’t even thought of it then. 

Now, Sherlock’s thumb caressed the back of his hand and John opened his eyes and stared into the blackness. The simple touch was like a brush of lips, like Sherlock’s arm encircling him from behind, pulling him back against him, stepping back into cover.

Begin as you mean to go on.

Broken arms and contusions and lips too sore to kiss.

Shoulder to shoulder. Hand in hand.

The lullaby of London rocking them to sleep at last.

ooOOOOoo

Sex came as easily to them as chasing down criminals and hailing cabs and arguing about shopping and body parts in the refrigerator.

It was the natural extension of a mind too big for its cranial cage, of a body always itching for movement, of adrenaline junkies craving a hit.

And while it was awkward as hell at first with stitches and contusions and broken arms, at the heart of it, there was nothing at all awkward about making love to another man.

He never thought about the absence of breasts and curves, nor missed the smoothness of cheek or chin. Sherlock, unconventional in every other aspect of existence, did not deviate from his norm in bed. A man who spent much of his life devising experiments to prove theories and solve problems would not keep to a rulebook beneath the sheets. 

Or anywhere else in the flat.

Sherlock particularly liked role-play, and had a trunk full of disguises to put to good use.

The first time had been a bit of not good - at least until John realised that it was Sherlock behind the ski mask, and that the gun was a prop and not his own trusty weapon. 

Sherlock never once broke character.

He tried every possible scenario, recording it all on a spreadsheet, until he knew exactly what John liked best, and what he didn’t like at all.

Bondage. Especially when the restraints were real, and secure. Getting off in public places. Sherlock peppering conversation with anyone - friend or stranger - with hidden, suggestive references to their sexual life together.

Making Sherlock wait for it until he was nearly crazy with it - resorting to begging, pleading.

Slow languid sex on Sunday mornings.

Fast, furious sex after cases solved.

Sex against the door when they’d been too long separated.

Sherlock’s fingers - long, and thin, and dextrous. Working him when he asked for it now, _now_.

Blow-jobs in the shower, one hand pressed against the tiles to keep himself upright, the other fisted in Sherlock’s hair, fucking Sherlock’s mouth until he came, then letting Sherlock bury his tongue inside him until the water ran cold.

Sucking Sherlock’s cock with his hands clutching his lovely arse cheeks. Telling Sherlock he was so beautiful...so smart….so good…. Murmuring _mine, mine, mine_ as he rutted against him, as he kissed his jaw, as he unlaced the corset of his favorite call girl disguise.

He didn’t get less creative, less inventive, with time and age.

John would never forget the time he went to use the loo one Christmas when a half dozen of their friends were there celebrating. He was washing his hands when Sherlock stepped out of the curtained shower and snapped a pair of handcuffs on him - real handcuffs, undoubtedly lifted from Lestrade - stuffed a flannel in his mouth then gagged him with a scarf, pulled off his trousers expertly, and sucked his hard-as-nails cock until he exploded down Sherlock’s throat.

Then he tipped him into the bathtub, arranged him on his back, and pulled the curtain shut.

“John’s having a lie-down,” he announced to their guests. “Had a bit too much to drink.”

Or the time John had thought Sherlock drowned in the Thames, Belstaff and all. How he’d said nothing during the long cab ride home as Sherlock stared out the window. How they’d walked up the stairs to their flat. How John had been waiting for him when he stepped out of the shower. How he’d kissed him, lips and chin and chest and belly, then claimed him, soft at first, then rough and demanding, and Sherlock read in his lovemaking the words he wasn’t saying, couldn’t say. _Don’t leave me. Never leave me. Never never again._

ooOOOOoo

The second time he saw the woman Mary had become, he was in Dublin, outside the hospital where Sherlock had just been wheeled in for an emergency appendectomy. He was sitting on a bench, texting Mycroft, when he saw her across the street.

Her hair was dark now, cut short and sleek. and she was covered in a red, all-weather coat. At her side walked a girl of fifteen or sixteen, a younger version of her with sandy blonde hair. They crossed the street together, and he watched with his heart in his throat, eyes on the girl, judging her age, counting up the years.

He was frozen in place - wishing himself invisible - wishing he had never seen this, seen her, seen them.

“Michael!”

A man - a bit older than John, sandy hair short and beginning to grey, with a short, compact build reminiscent of his own, had appeared on the pavement and had gathered both Mary and the child in his arms.

John looked away, feeling foolish.

Feeling foolish, and very, very relieved.

He waited ten minutes, regaining his equilibrium, then returning to the family waiting room where he would meet the surgeon, and sigh with relief at the prognosis, then sit beside Sherlock, holding his hand, until consciousness returned and he started to complain, and demand to be taken home, and refused to eat the hospital food.

And John would think of Mary and the girl as he dealt with Sherlock at his most difficult.

And would realise then that Sherlock was his family, and that sixteen years after choosing him over Mary, he had no regrets at all.


	16. Heart and Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: Supporting Character Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed the time to finish this chapter a few days early, while I still had the symmetry in my head. Thanks to all who have followed the story while it was a WIP - trusting me to actually finish this thing. Your kudos and comments are very much appreciated. -SS

“I never really thanked you, you know.” 

He’s brought a chair with him - one of the canvas and aluminum ones that fold up into a handy carrying bag. One you can pull out of the boot of your car and carry over your shoulder. It’s a very conservative forest green, and it blends in well in this particular setting. John knows he should feel foolish sitting here, but can’t get up off the ground without help, and he’s still refusing to carry a cane, despite the fact that he’s got one artificial knee and is delaying having the other replaced.

“You interfered with our lives from the moment I walked into that lab at Bart’s. You knew everything about me before I opened my mouth to say hullo. You probably have those goddamn cameras on me now – I bet you never had them taken down from that tree when Sherlock came back.”

He gestures to the tree in question, taller and fuller than it had been nearly twenty-five years ago. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sherlock, crouched in front of a grave marker, taking the flowers out of an urn.

“Your brother is a menace,” he says, stretching out his leg and getting more comfortable in the canvas chair. “He’s probably going to start exhuming a body if I don’t hurry this along.”

He remains silent for a long moment, tipping his head back to watch glimpses of blue, blue sky appear and disappear through the rolling clouds. And he sighs, glances again at Sherlock, then focuses, at last, on the marker before him.

“Convenient, isn’t it, that we had this spot all picked out for you?”

He’s not been here since the funeral, and before that, for more than twenty years. Yet he feels he’s on old, familiar ground, staring at a stone so similar - one Mycroft had surely chosen for himself, so alike was it to the one that had marked Sherlock’s empty grave.

“You really shouldn’t be dead,” John says. “Things shouldn’t work out that way.” He blinks back tears that are both traitorous and unwelcome. “He misses you. He’d never say it. He doesn’t believe it. But he misses you every day.”

He looks over to where he last saw Sherlock, but his partner is striding away toward - oh good God - toward a green awning set up for a graveside service. No mourners are there yet, just a young woman draping dark green cloth over a row of folding chairs.

“He’ll be fine - you know I’ll take care of him. And Greg - Greg too. He’s...well, I don’t have to tell you, do I? He’s out of sorts. Blames himself, but it wasn’t his fault at all, and we all keep telling him that, but he’s a mess. He’s right - you would have been safer in your car - but it wouldn’t have been any fun at all - and frankly, safe is over-rated.”

He lets Mycroft chew on that for a bit as he thinks of Greg, and the past year, and how he’s changed. “We’re taking him down to Sussex with us for a while. Jesus Christ, Mycroft - that cottage. That cottage….”

Neither of them had known that Mycroft Holmes kept a cottage in Sussex. But the deed was delivered directly to Sherlock’s hands mere weeks after the funeral, with a short note written in Mycroft’s fine hand.

_Spend a weekend before you sell it outright._

John had insisted that they honour Mycroft’s wishes, and he’d hauled Sherlock, protesting all the way, down to Sussex and it had been love at first sight - of course it had. Because it was Baker Street reapportioned and rearranged in the most chaotic collection of nooks and stairways and rooms and dormers and even a turret, with a feral cat or two milling about outside, and a cuckoo clock that chimed whenever it got up the energy - never on the hour. They’d been there only three or four hours when the local constable came pounding on their door with the most delightful murder to be solved, one with the most quirky cast of suspects they’d ever encountered.

John felt he was in an Agatha Christie novel.

“He loves it,” John says, in a conspiratorial whisper. He lowers his voice even further. “I love it.”

His gaze wanders off again, and he watches Sherlock’s arms flailing about as he speaks with the woman arranging the shrouded chairs, and a man in coveralls who’d come up to see what the commotion was about.

He swallows a lump in his throat.

“I love him,” he whispers.

It’s a confession he’s made a hundred times over, but never like this.

“And I have you to thank for that. For what you did that day - here - when you left me that card.”

There’s a break in the clouds above and the sun bounces off the polished black marble.

“You shouldn’t have died, Mycroft. Had you had the accident here - in London - but….” He trails off, remembering the call, the long and silent car ride. “But the hospital was just too small – not equipped for those kind of injuries.”

He gathers his thoughts about him and watches Sherlock, off in the distance, poking into the ground with a long stick. 

“We’re keeping the cottage,” he says. “But the rest of it - well, it’s more than any of us need, so I’m happy to report that the London Zoo does not have a herd of elephants donated in your name, despite Sherlock’s best efforts to get Greg to agree to establishing the Mycroft Holmes Pachyderm Pavilion.” He grins, remembering well the weeks they’d spent throwing ideas around, and summarily rejecting all of Sherlock’s.

“There’s something better, actually. They’ve given the money to Imperial College to set up a fellowship for the study of treatment of traumatic injuries. Your brother’s been awarded an honorary doctorate - I strongly suspect that the College’s offer had a lot to do with Sherlock choosing it to receive the fellowship grant.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but there is nothing but fondness in his expression. “And you thought he was insufferable when you were around.” 

He hears footsteps approaching behind him, and fingers on his shoulder a moment later comfort him more than surprise him. He reaches back to squeeze Sherlock’s hand.

“Wouldn’t you rather hold a conversation with someone who actually talks back?”

John shakes his head. “At least I can get a word in edgewise with him.”

Sherlock grins, but John isn’t looking at him. He’s studying the tombstone again, and Sherlock knows that he’s thinking of a long-ago wish come true.

_One more miracle,_ he thinks, knowing there won’t be any more miracles for Mycroft Holmes.

“A week or so before you came back, I buried my dog tags here,” John says, a bit wistfully, as if the loss pains him. “Left them here for you. Mrs. Hudson found them in the flat and gave them back to me - found them in your room, in fact.”

“Did she?” Sherlock says, and he’s still smiling, but is careful that John not hear it in his voice.

“I’m sure they’re lost now - I’m not even sure the stone is in the same spot as - well, as yours was.”

“They’d be gone now anyway - they’ve had this plot dug up twice since. Shame.”

He walks alone back to the car, giving John one more minute alone with Mycroft. He doesn’t plan to tell John that he’s had those very dog tags for years. They’re in a safe deposit box in London, and his solicitor has a letter instructing that the tags be dropped into the urn with his ashes, and buried with them at the cottage in Sussex, in the sunny meadow behind the hives.

John has folded up the camp chair and returned it to its bag, and he shoulders it, then approaches the granite stone. He doesn’t feel now what he felt here before for Sherlock. He doesn’t mourn Mycroft, though visits such as these leave him sad and melancholic for the rest of the day. Nevertheless, he drops heavily to his knees and rests his head against the cold stone and says the only kind of prayer he knows, the only thing he truly believes.

“You kept me going when I was ready to give it up, Mycroft,” he says. “I don’t think I’d have made it otherwise.”

He stands, teeters a bit on unsure legs, and steadies himself on the stone itself. Then he places a card atop it, weighed down with a fifty pence coin.

“I told you he was insufferable,” he says, glancing at Sherlock’s new business card.

_Dr. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective & Apiarist_

Sherlock sees him struggling to walk up the hill on the uneven ground on his very bad knee, and drives the car into the grass and halfway down the hill. It’s a bit not good, and John tries to make himself invisible as Sherlock backs out far too quickly, and leaves with the smallest squeal of tires as he pulls the car out of reverse.

They drive back to London with the windows open and the radio on, John’s hand on Sherlock’s knee.

Sherlock’s eyes are on the road, but his heart and soul are in the seat beside him.

_Fin_


End file.
